Game Engine Benchmarks
Game engine benchmarks are extremely important to the evaluation of the performance of a video card. It provides a consistent measuring stick and lets us know which cards work well for which games. This allows us to select the right tool for the right job. Obviously we’ll pick the card that performs best for the games or genres of games that we play the most. We’ll be concentrating on playable frame rates on each of the tests and we’ve used games that have built in benchmarks so that you can play along at home to make sure that you are getting the right card for you.
Batman Arkham Asylum: Game of the Year Edition (DX9)
Our first DX9 test is loaded with goodness and utilizes PhysX for those extra realistic effects. Personally, I wouldn’t play this game without PhysX so I didn’t bother testing without it. But we will look at a game later with and without it.
Despite it being a DirectX9 title, it’s still a lot of fun and it’s pretty clear that you need an nVidia GPU to play it right. Every AMD card gets destroyed here with completely non-playable frame rates, even the new HD 6850. The game also clearly favours the extra memory bandwidth provided by the ZOTAC AMP! Edition over the high core clocks of the overclocked MSI GN460GTX.
Street Fighter IV (DX9)
Street Fighter IV is a classic and you’ll see it played at LAN parties on the PC and on the console. The game clearly plays well on all modern hardware all the way down to the GTS 450. All three of the top cards are in reality very close to one another, but it would appear that the extra memory bandwidth offered by both the HD 6850 and ZOTAC AMP! Edition help out for a few more frames at the top end.
Final Fantasy XIV (DX9)
Final Fantasy XIV launched just last month and as an nVidia sponsored title you would expect it to be top dog. However, the benchmarks call the HD 6850 out as the top dog. Between the two GTX 460s we have slugging it out, the game seems to prefer clock speed over memory bandwidth and so the MSI N460GTX both stock and overclock wins the day between the two cousins. This is good news for those looking just to upgrade for this title as it seems that the best performance can be gotten with less expensive cards, when overclocked.
Mafia II (DX9)
This game is another title that takes advantage of nVidia PhysX. While I probably wouldn’t play this game without PhysX on, for the sake of fairness, I turned it off for a few benchmarks just to see what that performance hit really is.
There really aren’t any surprises here as without PhysX in hardware, the AMD cards take a huge performance hit. But even without PhysX, the AMD cards still take a bit of a performance hit compared to their nVidia counterparts, but by far less and all the cards finally put down playable frame rates above 60 FPS. Between the two GTX 460s, we see that memory bandwidth does prevail over high clock speeds.
We continue our look at game engines by shifting gears into DirectX10 titles which include Crysis, FarCry2, Resident Evil 5, H.A.W.X., and World in Conflict.