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High-end SLI performance & HD gaming
So in this part of our test we will do a couple of SLI runs. now the performance differences measures are not done in an objective way at all. First off, the driver difference is huge as we now work with the ForceWare 90 driver. Secondly, the CPU on the NFORCE4 platform is a single core FX-57 (you'd almost think it is a a low end processor when you look at all the benchmarks huh ?). Thirdly .. the platform itself is an NFORCE 4 - 2GB DDR1 system, totally different and that will effect the overall performance score slightly.
Why then compare the results you ask ? I wanted to show you the differences in performance on a next-gen gaming rig, it is perfectly fine to draw a parallel here.. I have been moaning that there are a lot of bottlenecks when you run high-end SLI. This new nForce 590 platform based system with the new dual-core FX-62 CPU should help bring performance up quite a bit as we'll show you. So basically is is next-generation high-end system performance, for the same amount of money from let's say a good six months ago, this is now the result. Be amazed ...
We have thank eVGA for hooking us up with the 7900 GTX we received a while ago. Check out the review on that baby right here. I also have to thank Adam here for providing the second GTX.
Serious Sam 2
March 2001, developer Croteam released the original Serious Sam for the PC and pretty much made other standard first person shooters look like they were in neutral. The game, along with its stand alone follow up The Second Encounter, had an impressive graphics engine, huge outdoor environments, some wacky weapons, a fun co-op mode, and most importantly some of the numerous and strangest enemies in FPS history. When players first saw the headless bomb filled suicide attacker charging at them full blast with a blood curdling scream, they knew that this game was something special.
Four and a half years later, Croteam's turn return to the plate with Serious Sam 2 and while it's basic gameplay hasn't changed it has enough new features to make it a fun and solid follow up to the original. The graphics are also greatly improved. Like the first, there is a story in Serious Sam 2 (there are even some extended cut scenes that pull the story forward) but you can pretty much ignore this aspect. It's all about "Serious" Sam Stone going from point A to point B and blowing up everything that gets in his way.
Constantly flaunting a huge draw distance, extensive foliage, many impressive lighting effects such as refraction and even HDR, plus more than solid framerates, the Serious Engine 2 looks like a real beast.
When I heard that the game supports true HDR I ran to the store though ! In the above chart you can see the results with HDR enabled and 16 levels of anisotropic filtering enabled. This actually is my preferred personal IQ setting for pretty much all games.
Weird results at 10x7 .. why I hear you asking ? Simple .. two graphics cards require more CPU cycles. So in the lower resolutions with a CPU dependant game where everything is way more CPU bound the score for SLI will be lower. The minute you run into more graphics power (SLi compared to a Single card) starting at 1280x1024 you'll see that becoming a contradiction and things will turn around. At 1920x1200 we see a ~30 FPS difference between our previous high-end system based on the FX-57.
F.E.A.R
As many of you will be aware, F.E.A.R (or First Encounter Assault & Recon for short) involves a rather mysterious looking girl in a red dress, a man with an unappetizing taste for human flesh and some rather flashy action set pieces al la' The Matrix. All of this is brought together by one of the best game engines around.
There has been a great amount of talk surrounding this game as of late and we here at Guru3D aim to please.
F.E.A.R makes its cinematic pretensions clear from the start. As soon as the credits roll, and the music starts, you are treated to the full works. The camera pans across scores of troops locked 'n' loaded and ready to hunt you down, all seemingly linked to 'Paxton Fettel', a strange kind of guy with extraordinary psychic power capable of controlling battalions of soldiers and a habit of feeding off any poor unfortunate innocents - presumably to aid his powers of concentration. It doesnt end there, after a short briefing at F.E.A.R. HQ you are sent off to hunt down Fettel equipped with reflex's that are 'off the chart'. These reflexes are put to excellent use, with a slow motion effects like that of Max Payne, or the afore mentioned Matrix. But here, it is oooohhhh so much more satisfying thanks to the outstanding environmental effects. Sparks fly everywhere, as chunks of masonry are blasted from the walls and blood splatters from your latest victim. The physics are just great, with box's sent flying, shelves tipped over, and objects hurtling towards your head. And the explosions, well, the explosions just have to be seen, and what's so great about this is you can witness it in all its glory in slow motion.
Let me confirm to you that based on this F.E.A.R. will have you shaking on the edge of your seat, if not falling off it. The tension is brought to just the right level with key moments that will make your heart leap. Play the demo and you will see what I mean. The key to this is the girl. Without revealing anything significant, lets just say that she could take on the whole of Mars for creepiness.
F.E.A.R has a built in performance test which we used to measure performance. F.E.A.R is an extremely hard title for the graphics cards when you set it to maximum image quality.
At 1920x1200 where you see the zero's that's just showing cards that had not been tested yet at that resolution. The results shown are based on maximum in-game quality settings however softshadows are disabled.
We tested the maximum detail settings to stress the cards to the maximum and ensure that in the future this benchmark will last a bit longer. Also in these results show the performance with 4xAA and 16xAF enabled.
