The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion Remastered review: Technology and benchmarks

With The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion Remastered, the opposite is true of many other titles: While the players are rather positive on the whole, the press sometimes hails criticism for technical shortcomings. We can certainly confirm the latter, as even on high-end systems - regardless of the settings - annoying stutters can occur from time to time (especially outdoors). We wouldn't describe the title as completely unplayable, but it could definitely be better. Visually, the remaster edition cuts a very good figure. No wonder, as it is based on the powerful Unreal Engine 5, which provides chic figures and faces, sharp textures and detailed landscapes at higher levels that clearly stand out from the original. Only cities come across as a little sterile for our taste.

We particularly liked the extensive graphics menu with its modern features. Starting with the general area, where the frame rate can be limited if desired and the FPS or VRAM load can be displayed (the latter option was still faulty during testing). The quality settings also really get down to business: In addition to four presets, there are over 10 individual settings here. Ray tracing is also on board, whereby only software lumen is activated by default (maximum hardware lumen is used from the Ultra settings in FHD, QHD and UHD). The package is rounded off by several advanced options, which are primarily concerned with edge smoothing (FXAA, TAA & TSR) and upscaling. In addition to XeSS, Oblivion Remastered naturally also supports FSR and DLSS. The last two technologies can be optionally supplemented with Frame Generation. There is also praise for the fact that all changes are applied without restarting, which saves time. Speaking of time: the loading time is perfectly fine on powerful systems or SSDs. Incidentally, the title takes up just under 120 GB on the mass storage device - an impressive figure.

A sprint in a challenging outdoor area is used for the speed measurements. We use the CapFrameX tool to record a set route for just under 20 seconds (see video below).

As long as you do without stronger hardware lumens and the maximum preset, the system hunger is still halfway acceptable. More powerful iGPUs such as the Radeon 780M can at least handle 1,920 x 1,080 pixels and minimum settings with some degree of fluidity. Mid-range chips at the level of the Radeon RX 7600S or GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop produce more than 40 FPS in Full HD up to the high preset. For the ultra preset and full hardware ray tracing without upscaling, however, you need at least a GeForce RTX 4080 laptop without upscaling - that's a clear statement.

With a mixture of 2,560 x 1,440 pixels and fully turned up details, almost all notebook GPUs reach their limit, only a mobile GeForce RTX 5080 approaches the 40 FPS mark. Things look much better with upscaling enabled, where a mobile RTX 4080 is sufficient for playable frame rates.

The Elder Scrolls IV mutates into an absolute hardware killer in 4K. 3,840 x 2,160 pixels and the Ultra preset even overtax most high-end desktop representatives, a "fully-fledged" RTX 4080 for example, only produces decent results including DLSS.

The wait for a patch has not been worth it so far: The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion Remastered does not really offer satisfactory performance even weeks after its launch. The temporary hiccups can be more or less annoying depending on your mood, but in terms of programming and optimization they are a faux pas that once again casts a bad light on PC ports. Without a powerful graphics accelerator, you generally have to make do with moderate resolutions or settings, although upscaling and frame generation can significantly reduce the graphics hunger. Hopefully, publisher Bethesda will still have the mercy to tackle the performance problems, especially when it comes to stuttering.