But Can It Run..... Oblivion!
### Article: Enhancing *The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion* – A Deep Dive into Graphical Overhauls and Performance
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#### **Introduction**
Hello everyone and welcome to another video in our mini-series, where we take older graphically unimpressive games—at least by modern standards—and give them a visual overhaul using various tweaks and graphical enhancements. The goal is to see how well these enhanced versions run on hardware that would have handled the vanilla game just fine.
Today’s title is *The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion*, another Bethesda classic. While many players might argue that *Skyrim* is generally the better game for modding, there’s no denying the charm of *Oblivion*. With the right mods, it can look absolutely incredible, and even though it’s often overlooked these days, there are still plenty of enhancements available to make its graphics shine.
Before diving into the graphical overhauls, let’s talk about how the game runs in its vanilla state and what kind of hardware you’ll need to achieve 60fps at max settings. Then, we’ll explore the mods I’ve used and whether they’re worth the performance hit—because beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder!
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#### **Oblivion: A Nostalgic Classic**
*Oblivion*, released all the way back in 2006, uses the Gamebryo engine, which was also responsible for classic titles like *Bully Scholarship Edition* and *Fallout III*. While its art style is admittedly dated by today’s standards, there’s something endearing about its nostalgic visuals.
Up close, the game can look a bit rough around the edges, but it still holds up surprisingly well. The dual fans on my GTX 980 don’t even break a sweat when running the game at 60fps. Even older cards like the GTX 480, which was a flagship GPU back in its day, handle *Oblivion* with ease. However, trying to run it on something like a GeForce 210—a card that’s notoriously bad—results in abysmal performance, barely hitting two frames per second.
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#### **Graphical Enhancements: Modernizing Oblivion**
While the vanilla game has its charm, there are certainly ways to modernize its visuals through mods. Don’t expect photorealistic overhauls here, but you can achieve significant environmental changes and texture enhancements that bring *Oblivion* closer to a 2019-level experience.
Thanks to Bevel X’s fantastic mod list for *Oblivion* on Nexus Mods, I was able to install a variety of files with minimal hassle. These mods include texture replacements, environmental tweaks, weather alterations, and more. I’ll leave a link in the description below for the mod list if you’re interested in trying it out yourself.
Here are some highlights from the graphical overhaul:
- **Textures**: Sharper textures replace the softer ones from the vanilla game. For example, trees, walls, and fire effects look much more detailed and lifelike after the mods.
- **Environmental Changes**: The modded game features enhanced weather effects, such as rain and overcast skies, which add a grittier, darker tone to the world of Cyrodiil.
- **Fire Effects**: The vanilla flame textures have been replaced with deeper, more dynamic ones that really stand out in comparison.
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#### **Performance Testing: How Different GPUs Fare**
To give you an idea of how these mods perform on various hardware setups, I tested them on multiple GPUs paired with a Horizon 530 motherboard, 616GB of 3200MHz DDR4 RAM, and Windows 10 Pro.
- **GTX 980**: Without any mods, the game runs smoothly at 60fps. With all the graphical tweaks enabled, there are occasional frame drops (low 50s), but the average remains around 60fps.
- **GTX 210**: This card is a disaster with the mods. It struggles to maintain even two frames per second, making it nearly unplayable.
- **8800 GTX**: Running at 720p in vanilla mode, this older card hits around 50fps. With mods, performance drops significantly, but it’s still playable at lower resolutions.
- **GTX 480**: A solid performer, this card maintains 45fps with all mods enabled while running smoothly at 1080p.
- **AMD FirePro W5000**: This workstation GPU handles the game well in vanilla mode, hitting 60fps effortlessly. With mods, it drops to around 50fps but remains playable.
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#### **Conclusion: Is It Worth Upgrading?**
Upgrading *Oblivion* with these graphical mods is a subjective choice. If you have a modern GPU from the last five years, you’ll likely experience no issues running the enhanced game at 1080p or even 4K. However, older hardware may struggle, and the performance hit can vary depending on your specific setup.
One piece of advice I always give is to play through the vanilla game first before making any changes—both visually and gameplay-wise. It’s an unmissable classic, and many of you might already be familiar with it.
If you enjoyed this video, please leave a like and subscribe for more content. If not, feel free to leave a dislike and let me know what you think in the comments. I’ll see you all in the next video!
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*Note: The mod list mentioned in this article can be found on [Nexus Mods](https://www.nexusmods.com).*
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everyone and welcome to another video and what is another in the mini series canna cran insert game title here now in this series we take older graphically unimpressive games at least by modern standards give them a little bit of a visual overhaul using various tweaks and graphical enhancements and then see how well they run on the hardware that would have performed just fine with the vanilla game why do we do it well the answer is the same every time because we can and if you have an older system with an older GPU you've got one of these older games and you want to know how it would run should you use any of these graphical tweaks then hopefully this may help you out with answering that very question but mostly it's just for fun so today's title is another Bethesda classic this is the Elder Scrolls oblivion I would argue and so many others that Skyrim is generally the better game at least for modding you can make that game look absolutely incredible with a wide variety of visual mods that are available as well as other gameplay tweaks and so on and so forth and these days oblivion is overlooked a little bit but there are still enhancements available out there and ones that will make some nice graphical changes to the base or vanilla game so without further ado let's get into it talk about how the game runs without any mods in its vanilla state talk about the sort of card you'll need to run it at 60fps as it is and then I'll talk to you about the graphical overhauls and mods I've used as well as whether or not it's worth it for the performance that you may lose as always beauty is in the eye of the beholder some of you may think these mods look good some of you may think they look awful but my advice would be to play through the vanilla game before you make any changes both to the gameplay and the visuals the same applies to every title I've tested thus far as it is the Elder Scrolls oblivion should run fine with the majority of modern graphics cards although 60fps is harder to achieve at max settings entry-level hardware it's not unrealistic to expect most GPUs from within the last five years to handle the game just fine oblivion released way back in 2006 and uses the game Brio engine which was also used to create such other classics as bully scholarship edition and fallout three I still admire the art style of the game because vanilla visual was a part of what form Alfond nostalgic memories of certain titles there's no denying value that up close it can look a little rough around the edges I mean it always has done to be honest as far as performance is concerned the duel fans of my gtx 980 don't even switch on as the game meets and exceeds 60fps 2010's legendary flagship the GTX 480 also makes light work of the game to name another example this is a card that can be picked up at a small fraction of its original cost today however try to run this title on a geforce 210 one of the worst products ever created in what could be a number of infinite universes and you'll be left wondering if you accidentally opened up the game executive or file in MS PowerPoint disabling all anti-aliasing at 1080p does mean that we can hit a 30fps average even if you will be subjected to some framedrops here and there and by some I mean lots so let's move on to the graphical modifications don't expect miracles or photorealistic overhauls here but there are certainly some significant environmental changes and texture enhancements available which will help bring oblivion a little closer to 2019 even if we can't achieve the same level of change as we could with say obsidians Fallout New Vegas another gamebryo based game as far as modding is concerned it's tempting to wait for sky oblivion the ongoing project that seen a volunteer-based group remake oblivion in the skyrim engine but there is no release date as of yet so we're left to our own devices for the time being that's far from a bad thing as there is plenty of modding fun to be had enough chitchat let's talk about the changes thanks to bevel X's fantastic and very helpful mod list for oblivion over at Nexus mods was able to install a load of files without much hassle at all resulting in a game that now looks like this I'll leave a link in the description below to the mod list included in these changes are textures and environmental mods floral tweaks and weather alterations to name a few I strongly recommend checking out the mod list and installing the files that appeal to you after all you don't have to install all of them first things first I'll show you a few comparison screenshots before and after the mods and then we'll move on to performance so the first screen here gives you a bit of everything we've got a tree floor and wall textures and a bit of fire in the background what more could you ask for this is unmodeled oblivion comparing this to the tweaked game which also has the cinematic oblivion E&B installed and the textures are sharper or replaced where necessary we've got new leaves better flames and enhanced weather effects bear in mind the natural weather mod and cinematic EMB do seem to favor an overcast or rainy weather style but the Sun does come out sometimes and things do brighten up ever so slightly this just gives the game a grittier darker look here's a close-up of a flame again this is the vanilla image it looks ok for a 13 year old game moving on to the modded game and you can see here that the textures depth of field and fire have all been changed the depth of field is totally removable in the ENB file usually I turn it off in other games but I felt it wasn't actually overdone here like it can be with some E&B presets plus it helps to hide some of these still rougher backdrops of the game here we have a door pretty standard on its own and with 2k textures it's not actually that different I think this door received some pretty good vanilla textures so it's more the brickwork around the edges where we see a difference this is my personal favorite screenshot not this one exactly because this is the vanilla screenshot but I thought this would be a nice location to try and wow you with with everything enabled here it's like we're actually standing in a river looking at the bank sort of you can see the new rock textures stand out quite well here too so now I'm going to move on to some unscripted gameplay just to talk to you about my experiences with different graphics cards and how they perform with these mods installed I paired all the GPUs with horizon 530 616 gigs of 32 hundred megahertz ddr4 I'm also using Windows 10 Pro which seems to work fine with oblivion these days so I touched on the 9 80s performance at the start it just so happens to be the card I've got in my system at the moment and without any mods the game runs fine at 60fps I had to cap it at 60 because it makes things run better I experienced a few graphical glitches without the cap but with the cap we're seeing 60 pretty much fluently without mods and when we've got all the mods enabled there are a few drops here and there but the average still works out at 60fps regardless when you walk through dense forests that feature long grass thanks to my long grass mods who will see a few frame dips too perhaps the low 50s and some other stutter may occur too but all in all it's a pretty decent experience on the 980 which is a card that doesn't cost too much these days and is still fairly capable - ladies and gentlemen if any of you suffer from epilepsy or an aversion to flashing images please look away now because the geforce 210 in all its glory just caused us many many issues i was surprised that it was able to ran but it wasn't able to run it more than two frames per second no matter where we were on the map so all in all it was a bit of a disaster with this one gig geforce 210 graphics card and even with the sli hack it didn't get any better now the in-game combat didn't kill me so much as it did the 8800 GTX an older card now one that runs the game fairly well at around 50 fps albeit at 720p with the vanilla graphics but when we have all the mods installed here that framerate does decrease quite significantly I feel like things should be doing a little better here the 8800 GTX was a top tier card back in its day came out around the same time as oblivion but err yeah I'm not quite sure what's going on with the frame rate but it doesn't seem to be able to run very well with the ENB and the graphical mods installed so bear that in mind if you have an old card like this and you want to tweak the game a little bit with the GTX 480 there's not much to report the game runs at 60fps without any mods installed and with everything installed that drops down to 45 so in my opinion it's still more than playable bear in mind just like with the 980 and all the other cars there may be a few hiccups here and there but at full HD 1080p you'll have no problem running oblivion with the 480 and these graphical mods enabled I don't think it's much of a framerate sacrifice for the graphical improvement though of course your opinion may beg to differ finally I thought I had better throw an AMD card in here we're using the fire Pro W 5000 this is a sort of workstation card but I've tested it before on the channel and found that it can still handle itself when it comes to modern games it performs just fine at 1080p 60fps is no issue with oblivion and the vanilla settings though this does drop down to 50 FPS with everything installed but it will sometimes shoot up to 60 hovering around the mid 50's in emptier areas all in all it seems like a pretty decent experience even on this card most of the time if you have a card like I say that's from within the last 10 years you may be able to squeeze playable framerates out of a totally overhauled oblivion especially if you have one of those high-end offerings or a card that would have been considered high-end way back when any card from within this sort of last five years should have no issues even with the overhaul mods enabled but it's just something you'll have to try yourself everyone's hardware is totally different of course and yeah I recommend checking out the mod list which I'll leave in the description have a play about with the Oblivion mods play through the game vanilla first time around as it really is an unmissable classic if you haven't played it already though I'm sure most of you have if you enjoyed this video please leave a like on it leave a dislike if you didn't subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already and hopefully I'll see all of you in the next onehello everyone and welcome to another video and what is another in the mini series canna cran insert game title here now in this series we take older graphically unimpressive games at least by modern standards give them a little bit of a visual overhaul using various tweaks and graphical enhancements and then see how well they run on the hardware that would have performed just fine with the vanilla game why do we do it well the answer is the same every time because we can and if you have an older system with an older GPU you've got one of these older games and you want to know how it would run should you use any of these graphical tweaks then hopefully this may help you out with answering that very question but mostly it's just for fun so today's title is another Bethesda classic this is the Elder Scrolls oblivion I would argue and so many others that Skyrim is generally the better game at least for modding you can make that game look absolutely incredible with a wide variety of visual mods that are available as well as other gameplay tweaks and so on and so forth and these days oblivion is overlooked a little bit but there are still enhancements available out there and ones that will make some nice graphical changes to the base or vanilla game so without further ado let's get into it talk about how the game runs without any mods in its vanilla state talk about the sort of card you'll need to run it at 60fps as it is and then I'll talk to you about the graphical overhauls and mods I've used as well as whether or not it's worth it for the performance that you may lose as always beauty is in the eye of the beholder some of you may think these mods look good some of you may think they look awful but my advice would be to play through the vanilla game before you make any changes both to the gameplay and the visuals the same applies to every title I've tested thus far as it is the Elder Scrolls oblivion should run fine with the majority of modern graphics cards although 60fps is harder to achieve at max settings entry-level hardware it's not unrealistic to expect most GPUs from within the last five years to handle the game just fine oblivion released way back in 2006 and uses the game Brio engine which was also used to create such other classics as bully scholarship edition and fallout three I still admire the art style of the game because vanilla visual was a part of what form Alfond nostalgic memories of certain titles there's no denying value that up close it can look a little rough around the edges I mean it always has done to be honest as far as performance is concerned the duel fans of my gtx 980 don't even switch on as the game meets and exceeds 60fps 2010's legendary flagship the GTX 480 also makes light work of the game to name another example this is a card that can be picked up at a small fraction of its original cost today however try to run this title on a geforce 210 one of the worst products ever created in what could be a number of infinite universes and you'll be left wondering if you accidentally opened up the game executive or file in MS PowerPoint disabling all anti-aliasing at 1080p does mean that we can hit a 30fps average even if you will be subjected to some framedrops here and there and by some I mean lots so let's move on to the graphical modifications don't expect miracles or photorealistic overhauls here but there are certainly some significant environmental changes and texture enhancements available which will help bring oblivion a little closer to 2019 even if we can't achieve the same level of change as we could with say obsidians Fallout New Vegas another gamebryo based game as far as modding is concerned it's tempting to wait for sky oblivion the ongoing project that seen a volunteer-based group remake oblivion in the skyrim engine but there is no release date as of yet so we're left to our own devices for the time being that's far from a bad thing as there is plenty of modding fun to be had enough chitchat let's talk about the changes thanks to bevel X's fantastic and very helpful mod list for oblivion over at Nexus mods was able to install a load of files without much hassle at all resulting in a game that now looks like this I'll leave a link in the description below to the mod list included in these changes are textures and environmental mods floral tweaks and weather alterations to name a few I strongly recommend checking out the mod list and installing the files that appeal to you after all you don't have to install all of them first things first I'll show you a few comparison screenshots before and after the mods and then we'll move on to performance so the first screen here gives you a bit of everything we've got a tree floor and wall textures and a bit of fire in the background what more could you ask for this is unmodeled oblivion comparing this to the tweaked game which also has the cinematic oblivion E&B installed and the textures are sharper or replaced where necessary we've got new leaves better flames and enhanced weather effects bear in mind the natural weather mod and cinematic EMB do seem to favor an overcast or rainy weather style but the Sun does come out sometimes and things do brighten up ever so slightly this just gives the game a grittier darker look here's a close-up of a flame again this is the vanilla image it looks ok for a 13 year old game moving on to the modded game and you can see here that the textures depth of field and fire have all been changed the depth of field is totally removable in the ENB file usually I turn it off in other games but I felt it wasn't actually overdone here like it can be with some E&B presets plus it helps to hide some of these still rougher backdrops of the game here we have a door pretty standard on its own and with 2k textures it's not actually that different I think this door received some pretty good vanilla textures so it's more the brickwork around the edges where we see a difference this is my personal favorite screenshot not this one exactly because this is the vanilla screenshot but I thought this would be a nice location to try and wow you with with everything enabled here it's like we're actually standing in a river looking at the bank sort of you can see the new rock textures stand out quite well here too so now I'm going to move on to some unscripted gameplay just to talk to you about my experiences with different graphics cards and how they perform with these mods installed I paired all the GPUs with horizon 530 616 gigs of 32 hundred megahertz ddr4 I'm also using Windows 10 Pro which seems to work fine with oblivion these days so I touched on the 9 80s performance at the start it just so happens to be the card I've got in my system at the moment and without any mods the game runs fine at 60fps I had to cap it at 60 because it makes things run better I experienced a few graphical glitches without the cap but with the cap we're seeing 60 pretty much fluently without mods and when we've got all the mods enabled there are a few drops here and there but the average still works out at 60fps regardless when you walk through dense forests that feature long grass thanks to my long grass mods who will see a few frame dips too perhaps the low 50s and some other stutter may occur too but all in all it's a pretty decent experience on the 980 which is a card that doesn't cost too much these days and is still fairly capable - ladies and gentlemen if any of you suffer from epilepsy or an aversion to flashing images please look away now because the geforce 210 in all its glory just caused us many many issues i was surprised that it was able to ran but it wasn't able to run it more than two frames per second no matter where we were on the map so all in all it was a bit of a disaster with this one gig geforce 210 graphics card and even with the sli hack it didn't get any better now the in-game combat didn't kill me so much as it did the 8800 GTX an older card now one that runs the game fairly well at around 50 fps albeit at 720p with the vanilla graphics but when we have all the mods installed here that framerate does decrease quite significantly I feel like things should be doing a little better here the 8800 GTX was a top tier card back in its day came out around the same time as oblivion but err yeah I'm not quite sure what's going on with the frame rate but it doesn't seem to be able to run very well with the ENB and the graphical mods installed so bear that in mind if you have an old card like this and you want to tweak the game a little bit with the GTX 480 there's not much to report the game runs at 60fps without any mods installed and with everything installed that drops down to 45 so in my opinion it's still more than playable bear in mind just like with the 980 and all the other cars there may be a few hiccups here and there but at full HD 1080p you'll have no problem running oblivion with the 480 and these graphical mods enabled I don't think it's much of a framerate sacrifice for the graphical improvement though of course your opinion may beg to differ finally I thought I had better throw an AMD card in here we're using the fire Pro W 5000 this is a sort of workstation card but I've tested it before on the channel and found that it can still handle itself when it comes to modern games it performs just fine at 1080p 60fps is no issue with oblivion and the vanilla settings though this does drop down to 50 FPS with everything installed but it will sometimes shoot up to 60 hovering around the mid 50's in emptier areas all in all it seems like a pretty decent experience even on this card most of the time if you have a card like I say that's from within the last 10 years you may be able to squeeze playable framerates out of a totally overhauled oblivion especially if you have one of those high-end offerings or a card that would have been considered high-end way back when any card from within this sort of last five years should have no issues even with the overhaul mods enabled but it's just something you'll have to try yourself everyone's hardware is totally different of course and yeah I recommend checking out the mod list which I'll leave in the description have a play about with the Oblivion mods play through the game vanilla first time around as it really is an unmissable classic if you haven't played it already though I'm sure most of you have if you enjoyed this video please leave a like on it leave a dislike if you didn't subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already and hopefully I'll see all of you in the next one\n"