A few days ago, Bethesda released The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered on PC. Powered by Unreal Engine 5, it’s time now to benchmark it and examine its performance on the PC.
For our benchmarks, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, RX 9070XT, as well as NVIDIA’s RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080, RTX 4090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5090. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 576.15, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 25.4.1 drivers.
Virtuos Games has added a lot of graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Foliage, Textures, Shadows, and more. Alongside DLSS 4, the game also supports AMD FSR 4.0 and Intel XeSS. Plus, there is a FOV slider for both first-person and third-person modes. Oh, and there is support for Hardware Lumen. Sadly, though, there is no support for HDR.
Oblivion Remastered does not have a built-in benchmark tool. So, for our benchmarks, we used this open-world area. This appears to be more demanding than the Prologue. As such, it can give us a pretty good idea of how the rest of the game runs.
In this article, we’ll focus on native resolution benchmarks. We’ve also disabled Hardware Lumen (as the game supports Software Lumen). Those interested can find some 4K/8K benchmarks with DLSS 4 here.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is mostly a GPU-bound title. For gaming at 1080p/Ultra with 60FPS, you’ll at least need an AMD Radeon RX 6900XT. The NVIDIA RTX 3080 was unable to offer a smooth gaming experience. As you can see, in this game, AMD’s GPUs perform extremely well. The AMD Radeon RX 6900XT is faster than the NVIDIA RTX 3080. Moreover, the AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX came really close to the performance of the NVIDIA RTX 5080.
At 1440p/Ultra Settings, you’ll need at least an NVIDIA RTX 5080 to get a smooth gaming experience. There were some minor drops below 60FPS on that GPU. However, if you use a G-Sync/FreeSync monitor, you won’t notice them. On the other hand, the NVIDIA RTX 4090 and the RTX 5090 had no trouble running the game with over 60FPS.
Finally, at Native 4K/Ultra, there is no GPU that can offer a 60FPS experience. The NVIDIA RTX 4090 was between 41-47FPS. As for the NVIDIA RTX 5090, it was between 55-59FPS.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise as Software Lumen is still a form of Ray Tracing. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Don’t expect to run ray-traced games at Native 4K, even with the NVIDIA RTX 5090. If, for whatever reason, you believe that an RTX 5090 will let you run ray-traced games at Native 4K, you are an idiot.
It’s also worth noting that Oblivion Remastered can scale well on older/weaker GPUs with its in-game graphics settings. At Native 4K/High, the NVIDIA RTX 5090 was able to push framerates over 76FPS at all times. On Medium Settings, we were able to get close to 99FPS. Finally, on Low Settings, we were between 113-119FPS. This falls in line with what we’ve seen in other UE5 games, like Steel Seed.
I should also note that the game will compile its shaders the first time you run it (or if you change some settings). Although there is no specific shader compilation screen, the game will compile its shaders for around five minutes. Or at least that’s how long it took on our AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D. During that period, you will get major stutters while playing the game. Below you can find two screenshots. The first is right after loading the game, and the second is after the shader compilation process has been completed. The game may also halt at the loading screen if it hasn’t finished its shader compilation step. Thus, I suggest waiting in the menu until it’s over.
Sadly, Oblivion Remastered suffers from some traversal stutters. These stutters weren’t as bad as those we’ve seen in some other titles. However, I’m pretty sure that most of you will be able to notice them. Plus, if you don’t wait for the shader compilation process to complete, you’ll get even more stutters. In my opinion, Virtuos should not have allowed players to play the game when this process is not complete.
Graphics-wise, Oblivion Remastered looks amazing. Virtuous has rebuilt all assets, and they have not used any from the original game. Thanks to UE5’s tech, the remaster looks just as good as modern-day titles. Seriously, this is one of the best remasters we’ve seen. Virtuos has used UE5 as the renderer, but the game still uses Gamebryo for its physics, game logic, and scripts. As such, this feels like Oblivion. This is exactly what all die-hard Oblivion fans have wanted. The original game, just with better graphics.
All in all, Oblivion Remastered runs like most UE5 games. The game is demanding on Ultra settings, but it can scale well with its different graphics presets. It also supports all PC upscalers, meaning that PC gamers can use them to further improve their performance. The only downside here is the traversal stutters. I don’t know if Virtuos will be able to fix them (as they appear to be caused by the game’s logic and scripts, which appear to run on only two CPU threads). In theory, the game could benefit from better CPU multi-thread support. However, I don’t know if Virtuos will be able to deliver such a thing. Because, believe it or not, the game stutters like crazy even on the PS5 and the Xbox Series X. So, this isn’t a “PC-only” issue.
Enjoy!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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