The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
We tested Oblivion by manually playing through a specific point in the game five times while recording frame rates using the FRAPS utility. Each gameplay sequence lasted 60 seconds. This method has the advantage of simulating real gameplay quite closely, but it comes at the expense of precise repeatability. We believe five sample sessions are sufficient to get reasonably consistent and trustworthy results. In addition to average frame rates, we've included the low frames rates, because those tend to reflect the user experience in performance-critical situations. In order to diminish the effect of outliers, we've reported the median of the five low frame rates we encountered.

We set Oblivion's graphical quality settings to "Ultra High." The screen resolution was set to 1600x1200 resolution, with HDR lighting enabled. 16X anisotropic filtering was forced on via the cards' driver control panels.

The Radeon X1650 XT just barely edges out the GeForce 7600 GT in Oblivion. The performance numbers are awfully close, but you will appreciate the Radeon's superior texture filtering in this game.

This is another instance where our chosen comparative test resolution is a bit out of a single X1650's league. I did try playing some Oblivion on the Radeon X1650 XT with these same quality settings at 1280x1024, and it ran quite well. I was impressed.

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
We tested GRAW with FRAPS, as well. We cranked up all of the quality settings for this game, with the exception of antialiasing. However, GRAW doesn't allow cards with 256MB of memory to run with its highest texture quality setting, so those cards were all running at the game's "Medium" texture quality.

This one is really too close to call. Although the GeForce 7600 GT's average frame rates in single and dual-card configurations is higher, its median low frame rates are very similar to the Radeon X1650 XT's.