Some players complain about low FPS in Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion: Remastered. Others praise the performance in the beautiful world of Cyrodiil. What's the problem?
After reporting on speculation about Bethesda's remaster of the popular fourth installment, the wait is finally over. However, many players are reporting poor performance despite using the recommended hardware. Others are experiencing the game as it was intended. Redditors are listing their hardware and reporting their experiences. Read more in the article, including a self-test.
A New Era
Players couldn't believe their eyes when Bethesda not only officially announced The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, but also released it on the same day. The game reached a peak of 190,000 players simultaneously on Steam after only a short time. It is also available immediately on Microsoft's Game Pass, as well as PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X. To say that the game is already a resounding success is an understatement. Players got what they wanted: a revamped Oblivion that stays extremely true to the original. However, it seems that not everyone is able to enjoy the game as they had hoped: Many players are reporting poor performance despite having the recommended hardware for Steam.
Criticism Of Unreal Engine 5 Continues
Unreal Engine 5 continues to be criticized for being unoptimized and complicated to understand. Players expect to be able to play games smoothly at the highest settings with the latest hardware. It is also said that games are now dependent on various frame generation technologies. But how can the gaming experience differ so much between players with similar hardware?
Player Reports And Self-Test
In a Reddit post, players list their hardware and their gaming experience so far. Even players with almost identical hardware specs report different performance. While some report nasty freezes, others say the game runs great. Other news channels claim the game is “disappointing” because of these issues. So we decided to test it ourselves.
My boyfriend and I tried the game with different hardware. Here is our hardware and the recommended system requirements for comparison:
Recommended Hardware (by Steam)
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X, Intel Core i5-10600K
- GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6800XT oder NVIDIA RTX 2080
- RAM: 32 GB
His PC:
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950x3D
- GPU: NVIDIA RTX 2080 Super
- RAM: 64GB DDR5
- 1440p Display
My PC:
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7700X
- GPU: AMD Radeon RX 7800XT
- RAM: 32GB DDR5
- 1080p Display
His Test
First, we tried the game on his PC in 4K resolution. In the settings, the “Medium” setting was selected in advance, despite the recommended system requirements. We therefore tried it on this setting first. Frame Generation was out of the question, as his GPU does not yet support it. After escaping from the sewers, we were immediately shocked by the poor performance. We were crawling around at around 30 FPS, and it quickly became clear that the game would be very difficult to play. We then lowered the graphics settings to “Low” and were stunned at how little the performance improved. Due to time constraints, we have yet to test it in 1080p with his hardware, but we couldn't hide our disappointment.
My Test
After this minor disappointment, I naturally wanted to know right away whether I would also encounter various performance issues. My PC has newer hardware, but it's not the best available. Unlike him, I only have a Full HD monitor at my disposal at the moment, which has been sufficient for me so far. From the start, the game defaulted to an “Ultra” preset, which I used to immediately create a sly Khajiit to see how the game would run on my system. I was already nervous when I ventured out of the last gate of the sewer. To my surprise, the game had no FPS drops. After running around the world for a few minutes, defeating a few enemies, and venturing into the city, I turned off my frame generation, which had been running from the start. I expected lag and jerky gameplay when my FPS dropped to 40-60. To my amazement, however, the game runs so smoothly that I hardly noticed it if I hadn't been looking at the FPS display.
Conclusion
We were shocked that the game ran smooth as butter on my computer, but was almost unplayable on his. Many gamers see the development of games in Unreal Engine 5 and the latest technology in ray tracing and frame generation as a negative trend. Since the prices of the latest NVIDIA graphics cards are unaffordable for many gamers, it makes some people almost angry to see that a former top model can cause such problems even with the lowest settings. We hope that a few minor optimizations will follow so that more gamers can enjoy the revamped and enchanted world of Cyrodiil.
How well does the game run on your hardware? Have you found any tricks to make the game run more smoothly?