Skyrim and Oblivion

[Harry Botter]

Hey guys i wanted to share what i think is neat and might not be cool but i havent kept up on computer hardware for years more than seeing what is costing alot on prebuilt machines from companies. I got Skyrim as a late b-day present and to my surprise it runs better than Oblivion does on my machine. When my semi decent desk top fried i had to get a laptop (convenience being a huge reason) i got it on a black friday sale so i got it at a decent price. It has an AMD e-450 APU, 8 gigs of ram, 1gb of video memory. So yeah not spectacular by any means but i still found it interesting that Skyrim runs better on this comp than Oblivion.

[obdigore]

I feel like you are confusing graphical updates with 'running better.'

[Kaj392]

Skyrim>Oblivion? Really? O.o
I don't know about the pc version of Skyrim, but maybe it's smaller then Oblivion, but that wouldn't matter.

I'll just go with

I feel like you are confusing graphical updates with 'running better.'

[Harry Botter]

I feel like you are confusing graphical updates with 'running better.'

When Oblivion runs choppy as hell and barely plays....after full driver updates and re-installs no i am not confusing the two. I said havent kept up on hardware not that i dont know the difference in simple things. Oblivion is the only game i have on Steam that has issues playing on this laptop.

---------- Post added 2012-02-10 at 06:07 AM ----------

Skyrim>Oblivion? Really? O.o
I don't know about the pc version of Skyrim, but maybe it's smaller then Oblivion, but that wouldn't matter.

I'll just go with

i did notice Skyrim was a lot smaller of an install than i thought it would be after Oblivion is like 10 for the edition that i have on steam.

[Wilian]

Skyrim runs better because it's mostly the same engine with updated (and renamed) more optimized graphic engine for performance. Beside some of the new effects brought in by those optimizations (effects that were part of Oblivion originally but later removed due to poor coding and inability to make it smooth on consoles) it quite much just the same

[Deleted]

I might be entirely mistaken on this, so don't hold me to it. But I'm pretty sure the engine Oblivion used over the one of Skyrim, is alot more demanding. Keep in mind, as companies continue to develop new graphics and new mechanics, they have to cram it into tighter space. But contrary, recently in gaming we've been blessed with two things that counter this. The less important is better hardware, which is inevitably the best step you can take as the consumer. But there's also the smart technology of programmers working day after day to find ways to cram more stuff and higher resolutions, better graphics and smoother scalings into less demanding engines.

I believe the engine used for Skyrim gives better production and requires less work from the hardware than Oblivion did. Consider it a bit like comparing a steam train and a modern electric train. The steam train will inevitably be a good, solid option as it can run on more kinds of tracks, but it'll always be more demanding in terms of the resources it requires for running aswell as be clunky and demanding for the self processing aswell. The electric train is able to travel at the same premises but the restrictions to make it work are far more complicated and alot more technology has gone into making the progress of it advance. But when you, in a modern gaming industry, can expect most players to have their railroads covered with electric wires (this being a representation of hardware and operating systems) you can design more elegantly to pack more power and better functions into smaller packages.. Okay, that was a pretty nerdy analogy but I'm sure you get the big picture.

In conclusion, the new engines used for Skyrim is not just graphically better but also less demanding than Oblivion was, since it was designed to push boundries rather than the Skyrim engines which were developed under constraints already highlighted before production. I hope it makes sense =)

[Jakexe]

Oblivion engine was fubar whereas skyrim's is more developed, the graphics (bar the recent high tex update) was similar to oblivion cept for view distance.

[Squeezus]

As a couple people have mentioned. The Skyrim engine is just an imporved Oblivion engine. Basically meaning that it runs better. You can compare the graphics of the two and see that Skyrim really isn't much better technicaly looking than Oblivion was. That being said, it still isn't without it's bugs. Until several patches came out I got the best performance on my oldest slowest computer in the house.