The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim Performance Test

The fifth installment in Bethesda's long-running Elder Scrolls series took the industry by storm last Friday, earning an impressive aggregated review score of 95/100.

Based on early estimates, Skyrim has shipped seven million copies worldwide across all platforms, including digital stores such as Steam. During a peak hour last Monday, Valve's platform alone recorded some 287,000 Skyrim players -- greater than the combined peak activity of MW3, Counter-Strike, Football Manger 2012 and Team Fortress 2.

We usually don't open our performance reviews with sales figures, but we felt compelled to illustrate the magnitude of Skyrim's launch because role-playing games rarely garner this type of attention. Although its popularity is undoubtedly aided by the cult-like status of the Elder Scrolls franchise, Skyrim isn't just a clone of its predecessors (we're looking at you MW3). Bethesda has made many gameplay refinements, especially to the graphics and animations -- our area of interest.

For its day, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion had incredible visuals, leveraging advanced lighting and shader techniques such as HDR and specular mapping. In fact, before Crysis launched in 2007, Oblivion was arguably the most taxing PC game available. You'd have been lucky to see 50fps while exploring the expansive realm on high quality with a pair of ATI Radeon X1900 XTs (a $1,200 proposition at the time). We don't expect Skyrim to be that stressful, but we do have high hopes for its graphical fidelity.

While it may not bring your PC to its knees, Skyrim promises to be the best-looking Elder Scrolls title to date with its newly developed game engine, called the "Creation Engine." Among other things, the framework lets Skyrim display greater draw distances and produce a more realistic world overall. Shadows can be created by any object or structure, tree limbs and the flow of water can be affected by wind, and other weather effects have been introduced, such as dynamic snow fall.

As fun as it is to chat about Skyrim's graphics, we're dying to get a little more "eyes-on"...

Image Quality Comparison

Below are three sets of in-game screenshots that compare the low, medium, high, ultra and maximum quality settings. Click the pictures for a full-res 2560x1600 image.

The low and medium quality settings are very similar. There is slightly more detail when using the medium quality settings and the textures are improved. Oddly, the high quality preset looks much better than the ultra quality in our opinion. High offers more details overall, while ultra has softer shadows and lighting.

Unlike the previous set of pictures, there is a significant difference between low and medium here. The foliage off in the distance is softer when using the medium quality preset and there are small 3D rocks on the ground. Shifting from medium to high significantly improves texture quality and adds considerably more detail, such as the large rocks in the distance and the crisper textures.

Again, when going from high to ultra the overall image quality seems to be reduced, especially when comparing textures. Ultra only seems to improve the shadow quality while adding a few shrubs and rocks, while maximum offers a noticeable boost in detail. There's foliage on the distant mountain, while the mountains themselves have sharper, more detailed peaks. Shadows are also improved.

Skyrim's water quality was very similar when comparing the low and medium quality settings. Likewise, while there is a noticeable difference when shifting from medium to high, it's not drastic. Yet again, ultra seems to be a downgrade as it sacrifices texture quality for softer shadows and more foliage. Maximum restores the higher quality textures and improves most other visuals as well.

Testing Methodology

We tested Skyrim with 17 graphics cards spanning all price ranges and we installed the latest drivers available -- neither AMD nor Nvidia updated their drivers for this game. Fraps was used to measure frame rates during a minute of gameplay from the first level. The performance was measured from the beginning of the level, having played through the first few levels the frame rates here seemed to be about as low as they go.

We tested the game at three resolutions: 1680x1050, 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 using the high, ultra and maximum presets.

High quality options

Ultra quality options

Maximum quality options

Test System Specs
- Intel Core i7 2600K
- x2 4GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-12800 (CAS 8-8-8-20)
- Asus P8P67 Deluxe (Intel P67)
- OCZ ZX Series 1250w
- Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (SATA 6Gb/s)
- GeForce GTX 580 (1536MB)
- GeForce GTX 570 (1280MB)
- GeForce GTX 560 Ti (1024MB)
- GeForce GTX 560 (1024MB)
- GeForce GTX 550 Ti (1024MB)
- GeForce GTX 480 (1536MB)
- GeForce GTX 470 (1280MB)
- GeForce GTX 460 (1024MB)
- Radeon HD 6970 (2048MB)
- Radeon HD 6950 (2048MB)
- Radeon HD 6870 (1024MB)
- Radeon HD 6850 (1024MB)
- Radeon HD 5870 (2048MB)
- Radeon HD 5830 (1024MB)
- Radeon HD 6790 (1024MB)
- Radeon HD 6770 (1024MB)
- Radeon HD 6750 (1024MB)
- Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit
- Nvidia Forceware 285.62
- ATI Catalyst 11.11

Using the high quality preset at 1680x1050, we were surprised by how well the relatively inexpensive Radeon HD 6750 performed (45fps), not to mention the GeForce GTX 550 Ti (65fps). When playing on high, Nvidia's graphics cards seemed to perform much better, as the GTX 560 managed 89fps versus the HD 6850's 77fps.

Increasing the resolution to 1920x1200 had a slight impact on performance as the HD 6750 dropped to 37fps, while the 6770 earned 40fps. The HD 6790 was garnered 50fps, which was only 3fps behind the GTX 550 Ti. The HD 6850 was able to match the GTX 460's performance with 67fps, while the GTX 560 hit 76fps.

Now at 2560x1600, the HD 6750, HD 6770 and GTX 550 Ti were unable to deliver playable performance. Furthermore, the HD 6790, 5830 and GTX 460 only provided borderline playable results. The GTX 560 and HD 6850 surprised us with an average of 36fps and 42fps -- not perfect, but tolerable frame rates.