Oblivion:System Requirements
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[edit] Knowing Your Computer's Hardware
It is essential to know what your hardware is before you can use this page. On Windows systems, the easiest way to identify your video hardware is to run DxDiag, which is short for DirectX diagnostic. To do this on Windows XP, click start on the lower left hand side of the screen, select the 'Run' option and type in 'dxdiag' without the quote. For Windows Vista, the operation is the same except the 'Run' option is now simply the search box at the bottom of the start menu. Once you're in DxDiag, on the first screen (System) there will be a box called System Information. Within this box will be your processor and memory information. Under the tab 'Display' will be the information about your video card, in the Device box.
You can also download a tiny program for free which will analyze your computer. Just go to this website and click on "Download Latest Version" in the top-left corner of the page. Also on the website it will tell you how to find the information you are after.
[edit] Officially Recognized Specifications
The following represents what Bethesda's officially released Specifications for Oblivion are. They are based on technology available at the time of Oblivion's release, and they have not been updated since that time. It is also important to note that even if a system meets these, it may still have very low performance. This information was taken from the Official FAQ page.
[edit] Recommended
- 3 GHz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
- 1 GB System RAM
- ATI X800 series, NVIDIA GeForce 6800 series, or higher video card
[edit] Minimum System Requirements
- Windows XP 64-bit, Windows XP, Windows 2000
- 2 GHz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
- 512 MB System RAM
- 4.6 GB free hard disk space
- 128 MB Direct3D compatible video card and DirectX 9.0 compatible driver;
- 8x DVD-ROM drive
- DirectX 9.0c (included)
- DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card
- Keyboard, Mouse
Note: The game runs on 256 MB System RAM but is hardly playable.
[edit] Equivalent Processors
Please note, this table is not totally complete, and it most likely never will be, due to product updates and the odd way companies have named their products. Much of the information is based on speculation. It does not account for possible over clocking.
| Processor Line | Minimum Requirement | Recommended Requirement |
|---|---|---|
| AMD Athlon641 | Any | Athlon 64 3000+ (1.8GHz) |
| AMD Athlon64 FX | Any | Any |
| AMD Athlon XP | Athlon XP 2000+ (1.66GHz) | Athlon XP 3000+ (2.10GHz) |
| AMD Phenom | Any | Any |
| AMD SempronA | Any | Sempron 3000+ (2.00GHz) |
| AMD Turion2 | All | Turion 64 MK-36 |
| Intel Celeron | Celeron (2.40GHz) | Celeron 420 |
| Intel Celeron D | Celeron D 320 | Celeron D 360 |
| Intel Celeron M | Any* | Celeron M 430 |
| Intel Core i7 | Any | Any |
| Intel Core 2 Duo3 | Any | Any |
| Intel Core Solo | Any | Core Solo T1350 |
| Intel Core Duo | Any | Any |
| Intel Pentium 4 | Pentium 4 2.0GHz | Pentium 4 3.0GHz |
| Intel Pentium D | Any | Pentium D 820 |
| Intel Pentium M | Any* | Pentium M 740 (1.73GHz) |
Notes:
*Except Low Voltage Variants
1 This includes both Athlon64 and Athlon64 X2
2 This includes both Turion64 and Turion64 X2
3 This includes the Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Extreme, and Pentium Dual Core
[edit] Video Chipsets
The video card market is literally flooded with cards with various clock speeds and architectures, so making a totally accurate list of all available cards is simply impractical. In order to make this list, several generalizations have been made, and several cards (most notably laptop graphics cards, and some integrated graphics cards) have been totally omitted, since reliable benchmarks for these are hard to find. Also, it is important to note that this list makes generalizations in the playability category. This was done to keep the list down to a manageable size.
One option for players with lower quality video cards is to install Oldblivion. Oldblivion is a utility that removes some video features from the game (specifically, changes pixel shaders to 1.1 instead of 2.0). The video cards which will support Oldblivion are listed in yellow in the following table. If you have tried running Oblivion and get a white screen, then Oldblivion is likely to work. Oldblivion has never been upgraded to fully support Shivering Isles or the Oblivion 1.2 patch, but it can still be used. Instructions for doing so are found on the Oldblivion site under documentation. There will be some glitches associated with this method, such as water turning purple and some Shivering Isles items will be transparent.
| Chipset | Officially Supported | Unofficially Supported | Oldblivion Officially Supported | Oldblivion Unofficially Supported | Unsupported | Playability* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ATI HD 4870 series | No | Yes | No | No? | No | Extremely High |
| ATI HD 3870 series | No | Yes | No | No? | No | Extremely High |
| ATI HD 3850 series | No | Yes | No | No? | No | Very High |
| ATI HD 3200 series | No | Yes | No | No? | No | High-Medium |
| ATI HD 2900 series | No | Yes | No | No? | No | Very High |
| ATI HD 2600 series | No | Yes | No | No? | No | High |
| ATI HD 2400 series | No | Yes | No | No? | No | Medium-Low |
| ATI X1900 series | Yes | Yes | No | No? | No | High |
| ATI X1800 series | Yes | Yes | No | No? | No | High |
| ATI X1600 series | Yes | Yes | No | No? | No | Medium |
| ATI X1300 series | Yes | Yes | No | No? | No | Low |
| ATI X850 series | Yes | Yes | No | No? | No | High |
| ATI x800 series | Yes | Yes | No | No? | No | Medium |
| ATI x700 series | Yes | Yes | No | No? | No | Medium |
| ATI x600 series | Yes | Yes | No | No? | No | Low |
| ATI x300 series | No | Yes | No | No? | No | Very Low |
| ATI Radeon 9800 series | Yes | Yes | No | No? | No | Medium-Low |
| ATI Radeon 9700 series | Yes | Yes | No | No? | No | Medium-Low |
| ATI Radeon 9600 series | Yes | Yes | No | No? | No | Low |
| ATI Radeon 9500 series | Yes | Yes | No | No? | No | Very Low |
| ATI Radeon 9550 | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | Oldblivion |
| ATI Radeon 9200 series | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | Oldblivion |
| ATI Radeon 9000 series | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | Oldblivion |
| ATI Radeon 8500 series | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | Oldblivion |
| ATI Radeon 7x00 series | No | No | No | No | Yes | Unplayable |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 200 series | No | Yes | No | No? | No | Extremely High |
| NVIDIA GeForce 9800 series | No | Yes | No | No? | No | Extremely High |
| NVIDIA GeForce 9600 series | No | Yes | No | No? | No | Extremely High |
| NVIDIA GeForce 8800 series | No | Yes | No | No? | No | Extremely High |
| NVIDIA GeForce 8600 series | No | Yes | No | No? | No | High |
| NVIDIA GeForce 8500 series | No | Yes | No | No? | No | Medium |
| NVIDIA GeForce 8400 series | No | Yes | No | No? | No | Medium-Low |
| NVIDIA GeForce 8300 series | No | Yes | No | No? | No | Medium-Low |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7900 series | No | Yes | No | No? | No | High |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7800 series | Yes | Yes | No | No? | No | High |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7600 series | No | Yes | No | No? | No | Medium |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7300 series | No | Yes | No | No? | No | Medium-Low |
| NVIDIA GeForce 6800 series | Yes | Yes | No | No? | No | Medium |
| NVIDIA GeForce 6600 series | Yes | Yes | No | No? | No | Medium-Low |
| NVIDIA GeForce 6200 series | Yes | Yes | No | No? | No | Low |
| NVIDIA GeForce 6100 series | No | Yes | No | No? | No | Very Low |
| NVIDIA GeForce FX series | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Extremely Low (without Oldblivion) |
| NVIDIA GeForce FX 5100 GO | No | No | No | Yes | No | Oldblivion |
| NVIDIA GeForce PCX 5300 | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | Oldblivion |
| NVIDIA GeForce 4 TI series | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | Oldblivion |
| NVIDIA GeForce 4 Go 4xxx series | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | Oldblivion |
| NVIDIA Geforce 4 MX | No | No | No | No | Yes | Unplayable |
| NVIDIA GeForce 3 series | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | Oldblivion |
| NVIDIA Geforce 2 series | No | No | No | No | Yes | Unplayable |
| Intel 9xxGM Express | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | Oldblivion |
| Intel GMA X3100 | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Low |
| Intel 845 or lower (Extreme Graphics) | No | No | No | No | Yes | Unplayable |
| SiS 760 | No | No | No | Yes | No | Oldblivion |
- These are generalizations based on the entire series of cards, single cards can be quite different from the rest of the series. The Video Card Rankings List on the Official Forums is a far more in depth list, and it forms the basis for this list. Some straight benchmarks (also used in this list) can be found here.
[edit] Operating Systems
Oblivion will run on either Windows XP (Home or Professional) , Windows 2000, or Windows XP 64-bit without a problem (though see below about installing Downloadable Content on some platforms). The newer version of Windows, Windows Vista will also run Oblivion without too much trouble, depending on driver support, which it sometimes lacks (especially on the 64-bit versions). There is also a performance drop on Windows Vista due to lack of mature drivers and Windows Vista's system needs. Older versions of Windows, such as 95, 98, and ME will not run Oblivion according to the specifications, but there is no testing to confirm this.
Linux is able to run Oblivion through Wine, a program that emulates DirectX. For more information on running Oblivion using Linux, please see the Oblivion:Linux page, which contains instructions for getting Oblivion to run in Wine on the Ubuntu distribution. Please note that although running Oblivion is quite possible, the wine program itself is not a perfect emulation, and it is sensitive to some driver issues that affect AMD/ATI cards.
Oblivion cannot run on Mac OS X but can be played on any Mac equipped with a graphics card that meets or exceeds Oblivion system requirements by utilizing Apple's Boot Camp software. Bootcamp is a software solution from Apple consisting of an EFI extension loader, a partition editor, and drivers that allow multiple x86 compatible operating systems to be installed on Intel Macs including all versions of Windows XP and Windows Vista, and most popular Linux distros. Bootcamp users must provide their own operating system (complete with license in the case of any Windows OS). Bootcamp was previously available as a beta to users of Mac OS X Tiger v10.4.6 and up but that beta release is now discontinued in favor of the final released version. As of October 26th 2007 Mac OS X Leopard v10.5 has been released includes the completed version of Bootcamp. Users who created Windows partitions under the beta will not have their Windows installs affected but will be unable to erase, re-size, or create new partitions until they install Mac OS X Leopard. Bootcamp allows Mac users with Intel based Macs to play Oblivion under Windows with no performance penalty.
[edit] Downloadable Content Installer Support on Vista and 64-bit Windows
A note on the official downloadable content site reads:
- The secured installers for downloadable Oblivion content (currently ALL add-ons) are not compatible with 64-bit editions of Microsoft Windows or any version of Windows Vista.
There are several ways to get the official plug-ins and expansions working on Windows Vista and 64-bit editions of Windows. Notably, the retail boxed packages and the downloads available from Direct2Drive are installable and playable on Vista and 64-bit Windows. There are other options described on the Official Plug-ins page.
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