![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Thursday , June 21, 2007
- Author:
- Mark Warner
- Editor:
- Brent Justice
- Google +1
MSI NX8600 GT OC Edition
MSI's value priced and factory overclocked GeForce 8600 GT has been released, and it may be an affordable option compared to the higher priced GeForce 8600 GTS. Does the MSI NX8600 GT OC Edition have what it takes to deliver the goods compared to its bigger brother; can overclocking match 8600 GTS performance?
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
(DirectX 9)
Oblivion is the next Elder Scrolls game and the unconnected sequel to Morrowind. It uses the multi-platform Gamebryo game engine. Oblivion features DirectX 9 shaders and Havok physics. The engine supports lush vegetation, soft shadows, and high dynamic range lighting (HDR). Oblivion also features SpeedTree for rendering trees.
For testing, we have chosen to do a manual run-through riding horseback from outside the Imperial City to Chorrol to Bruma. This run-through allows us to push the hardware as much as the game can. While this is an outdoor run-through, we do make sure to test indoor situations in our gameplay analysis as well. We have found that turning on the torch indoors with HDR lighting takes a big hit on performance in some situations. We make sure to test this scenario, and the posted configuration screenshots reflect the results of testing both indoor and outdoor scenarios.
The MSI NX8600 GT offered an acceptable gameplay experience in Oblivion. We were able to run it at a maximum of 1280x1024 with no AA and with 8x AF. Except for grass, which was disabled entirely, the in-game image quality options were at the maximum allowed values. Overclocking this video card did nothing to help the image quality experience and gave us only about 1/2 of a frame per second performance increase on average.
The NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS allowed us to use only one higher setting. We were able to use maximum AF, at 16x. Overall, the GeForce 8600 GTS did not deliver a significantly better experience in Oblivion, in spite of the higher price. The MSI NX8600 GT OC Edition kept up a similar gameplay experience, at the slight expense of a single AF notch.
Even though the graphs clearly show the framerates in Oblivion dipping below 30 frames per second for both video cards for an extended period of time, the actual gameplay was consistently smooth during our playtesting. As our goal is to extract the best gameplay experience possible, framerate considerations take a back seat to image quality and responsiveness.
Image Quality
As you can see from the screenshot above, the difference between 8x AF and 16x AF is not severe at this resolution. It is noticeable to some people, but certainly not all people and completely depends on the terrain type and distance. At long distances, the cobbled texture on the road is more blurred on the left hand side using 8x AF than on the right hand side using 16x AF.