Oblivion Remastered Handheld Performance

[17th Dimension]

Oblivion Remastered came out of nowhere and made quite an impact. The game is Steam Deck Verified but can it indeed achieve playable performance on Valve's handheld PC, or on the ASUS ROG Ally for that matter? Find out in our handheld performance review.

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[zenlessyank]

So it's a slideshow. That is a lot of money for some weak sauce.

 

[Suspecto]

No reason to play this on handheld instead of the original.

 

[phints]

Some games will be too heavy for handhelds and this is clearly one of them. I think Valve will probably tweak it a bit we'll see a bit more out of it, SteamOS 3.7 is coming.

 

[danbert2000]

I'm curious if a switch 2 port would fare better than this. I agree that the original Oblivion would likely be a lot more enjoyable, even without any mods.

 

[_roman_]

Those reviews are important to show how advanced a desktop graphic card is. I do not know how people play with 8 or 14 fps. I tried a nvidia 960 in whqd in 2023. It was a similar slideshow with late popping up textures for low end entry games

These handhelds look like a nvidia 960 or weaker in performance. Note I compare WHQD performance with this handheld with a display resolution and fps value from 1996.

 

[Heiro78]

I'm curious if a switch 2 port would fare better than this. I agree that the original Oblivion would likely be a lot more enjoyable, even without any mods.

signs point to....yes

 

[cfenton]

I'm curious if a switch 2 port would fare better than this. I agree that the original Oblivion would likely be a lot more enjoyable, even without any mods.

I'd sure hope so. The Steam Deck is three years old now.

 

[Cheeseball]

No reason to play this on handheld instead of the original.

Bad gamepad support out of the box. I followed this ancient guide for use on a Steam Deck but even then, controls were still janky compared to native Xbox 360/PS3 play.

 

[mechtech]

So not quite like an arrow to the knee??

 

[harm9963]

Back when the game out, have no need to replay again, great memories and lots of hours .

 

[Arkz]

I'd sure hope so. The Steam Deck is three years old now.

And this Switch 2 SOC is over 4 years old.

 

[Kaleid]

I learned to close the Oblivion gates by basically running through it all

 

[xSneak]

I've never tried a steam deck. I thought the main usage was steam link to play games rendered on your gaming pc ? The performance looks abysmal rendering natively; valve needs to update the soc already.

 

[Vayra86]

So yeah...

Does it look worse? Better? It does have 90 FPS

 

[boppingXQWB]

I've never tried a steam deck. I thought the main usage was steam link to play games rendered on your gaming pc ? The performance looks abysmal rendering natively; valve needs to update the soc already.

I think Valve are waiting for something transformative at the 15W-max power envelope. You can see that even though the Ally uses a newer SOC, it's even more of a strugglefest at 15W min-FPS. Zen 5's efficiency is only single-digit better than Zen 4 which the Ally uses. Maybe we will see SD2 once Zen 6 APUs are out.

 

[Vayra86]

I've never tried a steam deck. I thought the main usage was steam link to play games rendered on your gaming pc ? The performance looks abysmal rendering natively; valve needs to update the soc already.

View it as a handheld like the Switch, really. It comes down to what you play on it. See that video above... 90 FPS in OG Oblivion, modded to the brim. Same game. Same content. Both not exactly graphical masterpieces on this device...

I can recommend the device, provided you find the right content for it. Don't treat sessions on this thing like you do the ones sitting behind a desk.

I learned to close the Oblivion gates by basically running through it all

This summarizes the game. On some rare occasion you do need to mash the attack button a few times though.

 

[Chrispy_]

My understanding is that Oblivion's UE5 "remaster" is much like Blizzard's Diablo II remaster - in that it's just an update to the graphics engine and which texture/shader assets it calls. Underneath the graphics engine is the original janky game on the original janky engine with all of its problems and bugs, no changes to the experience whatsoever. I haven't read too many reviews yet, but I'm assuming the official UE5 remaster is faithful to the original, with all the broken quests and Bethesda bugs that almost guarantee you'll need to dig into console commands to roll back to quest checkpoints to a point before they broke (or skip catastrophically broken quests).

Oblivion with mods is effectively the same thing, for free - and also runs much better than UE5 which is such an overkill 'sledgehammer to crack a nut' approach to a game like Oblivion with such low-poly assets. More importantly, if you're modding you can also apply the community update that fixes 2500 bugs Bethesda should have fixed, but never did, and also tidies up the game world by fixing over 70,000 pieces of broken terrain geometry and misaligned objects. I can't forget the number of times I ragequit the original Oblivion because I fell through the terrain and lost all my progress.

 

[TheDeeGee]

Some games will be too heavy for handhelds and this is clearly one of them. I think Valve will probably tweak it a bit we'll see a bit more out of it, SteamOS 3.7 is coming.

Not even a 5090 can play this stable 60 at Native 1440p.

Everything about todays games and hardware sucks.

 

[tsunami2311]

handheld performance review before desktop gpu reviews???

 

[Godrilla]

Not even a 5090 can play this stable 60 at Native 1440p.

Everything about todays games and hardware sucks.

It's true but I am enjoying it at maximum settings at 4k/dlaa hardware lumen with ps6/pro experience with my 2022 4090.
Usually I hate frame gen but when setting reflex on without boost mode the latency is actually very playable. Boost mode was extremely laggy.
Anyone know when the PC version hardware review dropping?

 

[InfaRedd]

So not quite like an arrow to the knee??

In the thumb maybe?

Bad gamepad support out of the box. I followed this ancient guide for use on a Steam Deck but even then, controls were still janky compared to native Xbox 360/PS3 play.

Upscaling methods are unselectable for some reason. Does Steam Deck have upscaling? Oh, and small world isn't it?

 

[vekspec]

Not even a 5090 can play this stable 60 at Native 1440p.

Everything about todays games and hardware sucks.

Is that with RT on and all settings max? Just trying to gauge what settings 5090 can’t hit 60 at 1440p. Thx!

 

[Godrilla]

Is that with RT on and all settings max? Just trying to gauge what settings 5090 can’t hit 60 at 1440p. Thx!

If I can get an enjoyable experience ( using 2022 4090 suprim liquid at 3ghz ) at maximum everything at 4k using dlaa and dlss 4 using latest dll file and frame gen the a 5090 will be even more enjoyable. Look at them dets.

 

[Screamy]

Not even a 5090 can play this stable 60 at Native 1440p.

Everything about todays games and hardware sucks.

What are you talking about? I get over stable 60 at 1440p FSR 4 Native with my 9070 XT. The only thing I don't have on is hardware raytracing because I literally couldn't see a difference between that and software and it kills my FPS. EDIT: Also if you turn shadows from ultra to high I can't tell a difference and it gives you like 20-30 more FPS