The Elder Scrolls Online Beta – PC performance graphics benchmarks of Graphics Cards

BASIC GAME INFORMATION

    

release year: 2013
Genre: MMORGP / 3D / 1st Person / 3rd Person
developer: ZeniMax Online Studios
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks 

 

The Elder Scrolls Online takes players to the second era – a thousand years before the events of Skyrim. Tamriel has no single ruler, and endless battles take place in the central province of Cyrodiil. The game features three factions with three races each, warring among themselves and with the empire.

The Tharn family, in order to regain control of the empire over Tamriel, enters into a dark pact with the King of Hearts, Mannimarco, who promises them to resurrect the bodies of fallen soldiers. But in reality he serves Molag Bal, stealing souls for him. The soul of the character to be played has already been stolen – this explains the ability to return to the mortal world. The player will have to look for it, while at the same time saving Tamriel.

THE GRAFICAL PART

This subsection of our review highlights the main graphical aspects of this game. Particular attention is paid to the version of the graphics engine used, the version of the API used, graphic settings and the quality of development of the main visual aspects.

Supported OS and graphics API

The Elder Scrolls Online Beta only runs on Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8, and support for Mac OS X is also promised at release. Other operating systems are not currently supported and are unlikely to receive support.

 

The preferred and primary graphics API for multiplayer The Elder Scrolls Online Beta is DirectX 11. 

Game engine

The Elder Scrolls Online is based on the Creation Engine, which was developed for use in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the latest installment in The Elder Scrolls series of role-playing games, and has undergone major improvements. Previous games in the series (The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion from 2006 and several addons for it), as well as other games from the company (for example, Fallout 3 from 2008) worked using the licensed Gamebryo engine. Initially, the game was developed on the HeroEngine engine, but later it was decided to use its own developments with Creation Engine.

 

As The Elder Scrolls Online was more of a role-playing game, involving a large game location open for free movement; when developing the engine, the authors paid great attention to the ability to display territories with a large drawing distance.

 

The graphics engine was created so that objects were lit more realistically than before, and water rendering was of higher quality. Considering that in The Elder Scrolls Online The action takes place in a variety of regions, the authors paid attention to a realistic elaboration of the surrounding world. The company’s own system, Radiant AI, which was also used in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

 

Third-party Havok Behavior technology is integrated for character animation. 

Advanced Game Settings

The Elder Scrolls Online Beta has a wide range of graphics settings, allowing us to flexibly manipulate system performance. We have both basic and advanced graphic settings at our disposal. 

 

Below we have provided screenshots of the game at various graphics settings, where our readers can see the difference between the minimum, medium and maximum graphics quality settings.  

Low quality settings

Medium quality settings

Very high settings

As we can see, with different quality settings, the graphics in The Elder Scrolls Online simply change beyond recognition. We get the greatest increase in picture quality when moving from low to medium settings.

Comparison of anti-aliasing modes

There is only one type of anti-aliasing in the game, which has no definition and is simply called Anti-aliasing. Knowing the previous parts of the series The Elder Scrolls, it’s safe to assume it’s FXAA.

Comparison of FullHD and 4K

The Elder Scrolls Online looks amazing in 4K, but the excellent texture detail also makes it look great in FullHD.

General visual design and game physics

The Elder Scrolls Online looks amazing compared to its competitors. And the point is not that the game has support for DirectX 11, but that the developers treated the game with enviable zeal, having thoroughly worked out the world around it.

And the world around us in The Elder Scrolls Online is simply magnificent. Whether it’s snowy plains or tropical forests, each location makes the environment feel different, providing a different visual experience. In contrast to ArcheAge, where in various game sections I never left the feeling that I had seen this somewhere before in this game…

But water deserves special attention, and that’s it. Visualization techniques have long shown incredible capabilities, but water in RPG games has remained, to put it mildly, unsightly. The Elder Scrolls Online changes this stereotype and in what century water is as close to reality as possible! 

  

Next, we will move directly to gaming tests and determine what impact this game has on modern computer hardware. 

TEST PART

GPU test

All video cards were tested at maximum graphics quality using MSI Afterburner. The purpose of the test is to determine how video cards from different manufacturers behave under the same conditions. The average and minimum FPS were taken as performance indicators. Below is a video of the gaming test segment:

Our video cards were tested at different screen sizes of 1920×1080, 2560×1600 and 3840×2160 at the maximum graphics quality settings allowed by The Elder Scrolls Online Beta. Multi-chip configurations from AMD and NVIDIA did not show any increase in performance, which indicates insufficient optimization of the driver software. 

Testing at 1920×1080 resolution

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080

 

With these settings acceptable and optimal FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the Radeon HD 6850 or GeForce GTX 560 level. 

Testing at 2560×1600 resolution

  

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560×1600

 

With these settings an acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the Radeon HD 6870 or GeForce GTX 560 level. The optimal video cards will be solutions Radeon HD 6870 or GeForce GTX 650 Ti and above. 

Testing at 3840×2160 resolution

  

Testing at maximum quality settings 3840×2160 

 

With these settings acceptable FPS showed level video cards Radeon R9 270 or GeForce GTX 660 Ti. The optimal video cards will be solutions Radeon HD 7970 or GeForce GTX 680.

And although the game does not put a serious load on the performance of the graphics subsystem, the most preferred solutions at the moment for The Elder Scrolls Online are NVIDIA products.  

VRAM test

Testing of video memory consumed by the game was carried out by the program MSI Afterburner. The indicator was based on results on top video cards from AMD and NVIDIA with separate screen sizes 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 with different anti-aliasing settings.

Testing at maximum memory GPU quality settings 

 

The recommended amount of video memory usage for a resolution of 1920×1080 will be 1024 MB of video memory, for a resolution of 2560×1600 – about 1280 MB of video memory and for a resolution of 3840×2160 about 2048 MB of video memory.  

Micro-Stuttering Test

Introducing our testing of FPS output latency on a Micro-Stuttering monitor. The indicator was based on the results on video cards from AMD ARES II and NVIDIA GTX 780 at a resolution of 1920×1080 with maximum image quality settings.

Testing at maximum quality settings Micro-Stuttering GPU

 

Micro-Stuttering latency levels are slightly higher than necessary for comfortable gaming. 

CPU test

   

We tested processor dependence on 17 models of basic configurations that are relevant today. The test was carried out in those places where the value of video cards for the game is minimal and its load was less than 99%, this time at a resolution of 1920×1080 with maximum graphics quality settings. Below is a video of the gaming test segment:

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080 

 

The performance of processors in The Elder Scrolls Online was disappointing, considering that the optimization for video cards is simply excellent. As always, Intel models showed the best performance.

Loading of processor coresat maximum quality settings 1920×1080 Intel% 

 

Loading of processor cores at maximum quality settings 1920×1080 AMD%

 

The Elder Scrolls Online uses just over one processor core. And although the optimization for multi-threading on AMD is higher, this does not in any way affect the performance improvement relative to the competitor.

RAM test

The test was carried out on the basic configuration of Core i 7 [email protected] GHz with 16GB DDR3 2400 MGz pre-installed memory. The entire RAM used by the game was taken as an indicator. The RAM test on the entire system was carried out on various test benches without launching third-party applications (browsers, etc.).

Testing the game’s RAM consumption at various quality settings 

 

As we can see, with various quality settings, the amount of RAM consumed in The Elder Scrolls Online is at the level of 900 megabytes.  

Testing system RAM consumption 

 

If you have a system with 4 gigabytes of OS with The Elder Scrolls Online consumes about 2,2 gigabytes of RAM. In the presence of a system with 8 gigabytes, the RAM consumption of all RAM was 2.9 gigabytes. With a 16 GB system, system memory consumption was almost 3.2 gigabytes.

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