Now for the DX9 torture test, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. For this game, the only settings we don't maximize are HDR and soft shadows. We disable HDR due to the fact that Nvidia cannot render HDR with antialiasing (ATI cannot either without the "Chuck patch"). We choose to disable soft shadows because they don't appear correctly. Shadows can appear on a character's face if there is a light source behind their heads, which can make the women appear to have beards.

In our outdoor scene there are long lines of sight, day is changing into night, and there is foliage swaying in the breeze. This has a severe impact on performance, and is where raw horsepower can really shine.

The results are clear: Oblivion under DirectX 9 hardware is mastered by ATI's Radeon X19xx series cards. Other than the CPU-limited 1024x768 outdoor test, the ATI system won 9 out of 10 tests in Oblivion.