Testing – Gaming
Our first game test is Alien vs. Predator. Using DirectX11 and high quality textures, combined with ambient occlusion, tessellation and hardware-intensive anti-aliasing, it utilizes much of what your GPU can do in order to test your hardware effectively. When configuring Alien Vs. Predator, we used the following settings: Textures: Very High, Shadows: High, Anisotropic Filtering: 16x, SSAO: On, Tessellation: On, DX11 Advanced Shadows: On, MSAA: 4x.
The Lost Planet 2 benchmark includes both DX9 and DX11 modes, we will of course be running the benchmark in DX11 mode. It includes two tests (A,B), we have decided to go with Test A. The primary purpose of Test A is to give an indication of typical game play performance of the PC running Lost Planet 2. (i.e. if you can run Mode A smoothly, the game will be playable at a similar condition). We ran the Lost Planet 2 Benchmark at all high settings at 3 different resolutions.
Metro 2033 is a first person shooter/survival horror game, based on the book of the same name by Dmitry Glukhovsky. Set in a post-nuclear Moscow, there are tons of elements to the game that can absolutely annihilate your hardware.. which is why we chose it. It is one of if not the most hardware intensive game available. Set to DirectX 11 settings at “Medium” quality preset, MSAA 4x, AF 4x with DOF (Depth of Field) On. We make sure PhysX is disabled in order to provide a fair playing field for AMD GPU’s. We use Metro 2033’s built-in Benchmarking tool to do this for us, it keeps everything constant for fair and accurate benchmarking and graphics card comparison.
Remaining one of the most popular games of 2012, Battlefield 3 is both pretty and extremely fun. Online play is stellar with a multitude of game modes, DLC packs, and weapons, keeping the gameplay fresh and exhilarating at every turn. We set the graphics preset to Ultra and benchmarked a selection of the first “real” mission of the game, Operation Swordbreaker. We chose this sequence because it is constant. By choosing a small constant sequence (real gameplay, though, no cutscenes!), we’re able to accurately compare graphics card performance between models.
Here is the benchmarking sequence:
Here’s the results:
