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 S.t.a.l.k.e.r. - Shadow of Chernobyl

Shortly after another disaster in Chernobyl, the authorities surround the area with the Russian equivalent of the U.S. National Guard, and they begin to hear weird screams and rumblings coming from within. After a while, though, most of them are returned to earlier posts. Curiosity gets the better of some people, so they sneak into the 30-kilometer area to do some good old-fashioned investigating. These people are called Stalkers, and they report back to the authorities with their findings.

The 3D engine shines in a few key areas, all crucial in shaping the game's atmosphere. It's got a huge draw distance, which leads to the palpable feeling that this is a big world. Lighting and shadowing are it's other big strengths. For this benchmark we have the in-game settings at maximum (AA/AF enabled), Dynamic lighting was disabled as this feature is really for next-gen graphics cards performance wise.

As stated we went for the in-game's maximum quality settings yet with static lighting. This will give us a very good overall framerate. With the upcoming high-performance DX10 graphics cards this year later in the year we might switch towards dynamic lighting though, which will crumble the overall framerate at the very least in half. To get you an idea where the performance stands compared to a high-end card .. I have included the 8800 GTX here.

Above the comparison among brands again. IQ settings wise this is what 98% of you will be using. Obviously since S.t.a.l.k.e.r was released a short while ago I have very few results. Both the GT and GTS push good numbers, really, nothing to be ashamed about.

Screenshot of where we measure framerate, this is also our image quality setting.