Elder Scrolls IV with 1420/1520 8400

Anyone played this yet, how does it handle? I'm thinking of buying it right now.

 

What are the PC system requirements?

Recommended:

* 3 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
* 1 GB System RAM
* ATI X800 series, NVIDIA GeForce 6800 series, or higher video card

Minimum System Requirements:

* Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows XP 64-bit
* 512MB System RAM
* 2 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
* 128MB Direct3D compatible video card
* and DirectX 9.0 compatible driver;
* 8x DVD-ROM drive
* 4.6 GB free hard disk space
* DirectX 9.0c (included)
* DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card
* Keyboard, Mouse

Supported Video Card Chipsets:

* ATI X1900 series
* ATI X1800 series
* ATI X1600 series
* ATI X1300 series
* ATI X850 series
* ATI x800 series
* ATI x700 series
* ATI x600 series
* ATI Radeon 9800 series
* ATI Radeon 9700 series
* ATI Radeon 9600 series
* ATI Radeon 9500 series
* NVIDIA GeForce 7800 series
* NVIDIA GeForce 6800 series
* NVIDIA GeForce 6600 series
* NVIDIA GeForce 6200 series
* NVIDIA GeForce FX series



Should run fine.

 

That, and the 8400M GS has better tech powering it and is roughly as fast a ATI X800, medium settings should be fine.

 

Absolutely no way it's as fast as an X800. The 8400M GS may be around the speed of the 6600GT or lower, which means significantly slower than the X800. It should be okay for low-med details.

 

3DMark06 Scores:

ATI X800 XT: 1,353 3DMarks (SM2.0, toms hardware vga charts)
nVidia 8400M GS: 1,408 3DMarks (HDR/SM3.0, this site)

This is only theoretical, but wouldn't you agree the 8400 has the advantage?

edit: on the same benchmark, the 6600GT scores 783 3DMarks, so its a little out if this league.

 

if I can find my copy in the next couple of days I'll install it and try to run it with the GS. My feeling, is it'll run only at very very low settings. It got some hickups with my 7900gt

 

i just want to know if it's worth getting... sigh.

i'll be using the c2d 1.8ghz, 2 gig ram, and the 8400gs so i would think it would run good, considering the min specs for the game... but what do i know.

 

processor and ram wise you'll be fine, but like I said it'll run at low rez and not with most of the eye candy on. Worth getting, ahhh, its okay. I like fable better. I did beat it, the main story was fun and worth. There are a ton of side quests as well. see if any of you friends have it and borrow it. that's what I did, found I liked it and bought it for myself

 

I think if the above is anything to go by, it will definately be playable on your system. Atleast it ran ok on my old 7600GS on low-medium settings and the 8400M is certainly quicker than that.

 

You're not comparing the same test. Tom's Hardware's test shows the actual SM2.0/3.0/HDR tests in 3DMark06, not the final score.

The M1330's 8400M GS got ~1400, however that is with a lower than default resolution, since 3DMark06's 1280x1024 default resolution cannot be rendered on the 1280x800 display on the M1330. So already, that score is inflated.

Then to actually see what the X800 series and 6600GT can do (even if it is in a flawed bench like 3DMark), take a look at the scores here, specifically the 3DMark06 total score, which is the first chart in each of the following two links.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/3dmark06_13.html
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/3dmark06_16.html

The X800XL already hits over 1700, and it's quite a bit slower than the X800XT you were talking about. As you can see, the 6600GT also gets something close to 1500, and these tests are done at the default 1280x1024, not the 1280x800 that the 8400M GS tests would have been run at.

So yeah, the 8400M GS is significantly slower than the X800XT and most probably slower than the 6600GT. The 8600 and below series do extremely well in 3DMark tests compared to performance in most games due to their architecture's heavy emphasis on shader power, which is strongly reflected in the recent 3DMark benches, but isn't the bottleneck in most games today.

 

So the question is, if i have the 1280x800 screen, and the 8400gs, would it play oblivion decently, or should i just pass up that game?

or should i just buy guild wars and play that one since it's a free monthly charge?

 

the biggest bottleneck is memory bandwith, its far smaller than a x800, 6800 or 6600GT

 

There's a good chance you'll be able to play it decently, but probably not at the native resolution if you want it to look half decent - 6600GT's seem to hold up okay, better at 1024x768 than at 1280x1024, and the 8xxx series does emphasis shader performance, which will be useful in Oblivion.

 

if only they offered 8400M GT, than we wouldn't have this memory bandwith problem

 

I have a 1520 and on XP I get the following -> (fraps benchmark)

Elder Scrolls Oblivion
1024x768 Under Windows XP
No AA (HDR Bloom enabled instead)
All distant rendering on
AVG of 46fps

Same settings except 1680x1050 ->
AVG of 28fps

The game plays beautifully on the 8600gt