Recently, professional hardware analysis agency Digital Foundry (DF) released an optimization analysis report on the recently released Unreal 5 Engine remake of "The Elder Scrolls IV". DF used the current top flagship - RTX 5090 to run the game at 4K resolution and full high quality, and the performance was poor, which was called "one of the worst PC games ever tested".

The optimization performance of "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered" is a disaster. The main problems include:

• Severe CPU bottlenecks lead to frequent freezes, and top hardware is of no help
• Excessive resource requirements force players to reduce image quality and sacrifice visual effects
• Limited optimization options make it difficult for players to balance performance and image quality

The console version is slightly better, but the problem remains, and the patch improvement is limited. Although the game is modernized visually (thanks to Unreal Engine 5's Lumen, Nanite and other technologies), performance issues seriously undermine the experience. DF pointed out that this level of optimization does not look like a game in 2025, and the development team needs to solve the problem through patches or low-level optimization. Compared with successful remake cases (such as "Shadow of the Colossus"), "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered" is more like the failure case of "Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition", which failed to fully realize the potential of modern technology.

Report highlights:

The remake was developed by Virtuos and Bethesda, retaining the original Gamebryo engine logic and using Unreal Engine 5 as the rendering layer. Although Unreal Engine 5 brings modern effects such as Nanite virtual geometry and Lumen global illumination, it fails to optimize the loading mechanism of the original engine, resulting in the continuation of the stuttering problem.

The remake has inherited the stuttering issues of the 2006 original game, especially when moving in the open world, where each time a new world grid is loaded or unloaded, it will cause noticeable stuttering. This problem existed in the original game, but the remake failed to effectively solve it, and was exacerbated by higher resource requirements.

Even on top-level hardware (such as Ryzen 7 9800X3D and RTX 5090), the stuttering is still severe, destroying the exploration-centric gaming experience. The article points out that this stuttering makes it difficult for players to enjoy smooth movement and affects the core gameplay.

"Stuttering is usually a CPU-related problem, which can usually be alleviated by increasing the image quality, reducing the frame rate, and reducing CPU-induced stuttering through buffering. In effect, you are masking CPU problems with the FPS cap, using the extra processing time to improve visual fidelity. I tried using ultra-high resolution and limiting the frame rate, but even the most powerful gaming CPU currently available - the Ryzen 7 9800X3D - could not solve the stuttering problem of this game. This is a core problem because a key gameplay of the game is to walk and explore the environment, and I couldn't find any way to achieve smooth movement, which fundamentally affected the gaming experience."

The game's use of hardware resources is very exaggerated. It is not only extremely demanding on the CPU, but also very taxing on the GPU. The article calls it "one of the strangest resource-intensive games tested." Even on high-end hardware, players still need to significantly reduce the image quality settings to maintain an acceptable average frame rate.

On mainstream or slightly older CPUs such as the Ryzen 5 3600, the frame time is extended by 2 to 2.5 times, resulting in a catastrophic drop in performance. Even on a more powerful mid-range CPU, the experience is still bad.

"The problem is that most people don't have a powerful CPU, which makes the game stuttering worse. On mainstream configurations, stuttering is much worse than on high-end configurations. For example, when running games on a Ryzen 5 3600, the frame time is 2 to 2.5 times longer than the already poor performance on the 9800X3D, and the performance is simply catastrophic. Although the Ryzen 5 3600 is a bit outdated now, many players may have upgraded to a more mainstream configuration, but even on the intermediate configuration between the two, the experience is still terrible."

RTX 5090 with Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor, at 1080P resolution and DLSS performance mode, the frame rate exceeds 60FPS, but there will be frequent stuttering, and even if options such as Lumen global illumination are lowered, the improvement effect is very limited.

The console versions (Xbox Series X/S and PS5) also have performance issues, although the latest patch (April 25, 2025) has improved the frame rate of the Xbox Series X (up to 16fps in some scenes). However, the stuttering problem still exists, especially when traversing the world, and the patch has not fundamentally solved the problem.

Discussions on Reddit indicate that the stuttering problem of the console version is slightly less than that of the PC, but it is still obvious. For example, PS5 players report short-term movement stuttering, and the Xbox Series X performs well in early games, but may worsen as the archive becomes larger.

"The Elder Scrolls IV" 2025 modern remake and 2006 original screen comparison video:

Optimization suggestions:

Disabling hardware-based Lumen global illumination (switching to software Lumen) is the only setting that can significantly improve performance, with an average frame rate increase of about 35%. However, this will result in a decrease in image quality, including a significant degradation of water surface reflections, environmental shadows, and lighting effects, sacrificing the visual experience.

Lowering other image quality settings (such as resolution, texture quality, etc.) brings negligible performance gains (only 10% on average), but the image quality loss is huge. At the lowest settings, the game may not even be as good as the original version in 2006, which makes the remake meaningless.

"Normally, if you want to increase your average framerate, we recommend optimizing settings, but the problem here is that there's only one setting that actually works: turning off hardware RT-based Lumen global illumination. Switching to software Lumen (the kind used on consoles) improves performance by about 35% on average. In theory, this is a good improvement when the CPU is bottlenecked, but the quality of the image is significantly reduced. Water reflections are noticeably worse, and environmental shadows and lighting effects are greatly reduced, which is basically no free money. Worse, even with this method, the duration of the game's lag is not improved.

Lowering other settings has little effect, but the image quality is greatly reduced. Turning all settings to minimum only improves CPU performance by about 10% on average, and the lag is only slightly alleviated, but the image quality is terrible. The so-called "optimized settings" should theoretically lead to a smoother experience, but this game in its current state simply can't do that. I really don't understand why the CPU performance is so poor and why adjusting the settings is almost useless. At the lowest settings, the game is completely unattractive and in some places even worse than the 2006 original. This is really That's bad.

Of course, there may be some die-hard Elder Scrolls fans who don't care about these stutters and want to improve GPU performance, after all, the game is also very demanding on graphics cards. I have a few suggestions:

First, stick with hardware Lumen, because it has much better lighting effects on vegetation, and software Lumen looks more like a screen-space effect, which is much worse.

Next, turn the hardware lighting mode to Low. This setting uses the surface cache to handle reflected light instead of direct lighting, so objects in reflections will lose highlights and ray-traced shadows. But when the screen is full of reflections, this setting can improve performance by about 16% over other options. For mid-range GPUs, this is worth it. However, low-end graphics cards may still have to use the high settings of software Lumen, despite its many shortcomings.

The other settings are basically standard for Unreal Engine 5's default menu. In short, the high settings run much better than the maxed-out epic preset, with little loss of image quality. Going from epic to high in my tests has increased performance by up to 38%, and there is almost no quality loss when using hardware Lumen, so it is definitely the preferred option. ”