by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko
11/25/2008 | 09:07 AM
The consumer graphics hardware market is always ready to offer a broad range of solutions to suit everyone’s budget. The current year of 2008 brought no revolution in this respect even though the introduction of advanced cards into the below-$200 and below-$100 price sectors might seem like one. For example, the ATI Radeon HD 4850 seems to be able to satisfy the demands of most PC gamers as is confirmed in tests carried out by our labs as well as by other reviewers and users. The current trend to develop multiplatform game projects contributes to this, too. Besides the PC platform, game developers now have to account for game consoles such as Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3. That is, they must take into account the hardware capabilities of each console which remain the same throughout its entire lifecycle. Game consoles can’t be upgraded as easily as a PC/Windows computer.
On one hand, this means that games come with less advanced visuals than what could be implemented basing on the capabilities of the latest gaming hardware for the PC. But on the other hand, such games have modest requirements to your gaming system’s configuration and do not usually force you to invest a serious sum of money into purchasing a top-end graphics card.
PC-exclusive projects are, on the contrary, at the cutting edge of progress and have tremendous system requirements as was the case with Crysis. This first-person sci-fi shooter is notorious for having been unable to run at a playable frame rate on any of top-end graphics cards available at the moment of its release if you turned on the highest graphics quality settings. With such games you may also find out that even the system configuration recommended by the game developer proves unable to provide smooth gameplay, making you think about buying a new and faster graphics card.
Again, there is a wide choice of shopping options these days. The price range goes all the way from $50 to $600 and even beyond. If you have the money and are ready to part with it, you can spend more than $1000 for your computer’s graphics subsystem.
To make this review comprehensive we benchmarked 12 graphics hardware solutions in seven popular games of different genres. We hope this test session will help make you an informed shopping choice.
To test our graphics cards performance in contemporary games we put together the following testbed:
According to our testing methodology, the drivers were set up to provide the highest possible quality of texture filtering and to minimize the effect of software optimizations used by default by both: AMD/ATI and Nvidia. Also, to ensure maximum image quality, we enabled transparent texture filtering. As a result, our ATI and Nvidia driver settings looked as follows:
ATI Catalyst:
Nvidia ForceWare:
We selected the highest possible level of detail in each of the seven games discussed today, however, in some cases we didn’t use certain advanced settings. The games configuration files weren’t modified in any way, because the user doesn’t have to know how to do it. Except in Devil May Cry 4 game that features built-in testing tools, we used Fraps 2.9.1 in manual mode. Each test was run three times and the average result was taken for further analysis. We measured not only the average speed, but also the minimum speed of the cards where possible, that allowed us to better evaluate the level of gaming comfort in each title.
We tested the following graphics accelerators:
Premium/High-End:
Performance-Mainstream:
Mainstream:
To estimate their performance we used 7 latest games of different genres:
We ran the tests in resolutions corresponding to the most popular monitor diagonals: 1280x1024 (17”-19”), 1680x1050 (20”-22”), 1920x1200 (23”-27”) and 2560x1600 (30”). Performance-Mainstream graphics cards were limited to 1920x1200 resolution, and Mainstream graphics cards – to 1680x1050. For the two highest categories we enabled anisotropic filtering and MSAA 4x antialiasing if the game supported it. Lower-performance solutions were tested only with enabled anisotropic filtering, because their potential may not be sufficient to use full-screen antialiasing at an acceptable average and minimal performance level.
If not an unquestioned hit, the first game on our list is surely an event in the genre of third-person shooters. Dead Space is especially in contrast with the ongoing campaign to reduce violence in video games. Violence, though justified strategically, is the foundation of this project. When you sit down to play Dead Space for a first time, you may be surprised to find your character to be a humble engineer instead of an armed tough trooper who’d easily wipe out legions of monsters. As you find yourself on board a contaminated spaceship and, being a technician, without any gun or something, you have to learn to get along with what you have at hand to kill your enemies. It may be a plasma chopper or a gas burner or anything.
As becomes a civilian, Isaac Clarke – that’s the name of the hero – is highly vulnerable. So, instead of an easy trip with a huge gun in hand, you are up to a multi-hour game of hide-and-seek with death lurking in every corner. Pulling down the trigger when you spot an enemy doesn’t always work here. The local monsters boast tremendous vitality and can easily sustain a squall of random fire. In fact, the style of encounters in Dead Space might be characterized as “strategic dismemberment”: cutting off the head of a mutant slows it down considerably on its way to your character’s throat and you have enough time to finish it more or less confidently by cutting off one of its hands with a disc saw. That’s something you have to do throughout the entire game. Although Isaac’s tools are not real weapons, they do spend “ammunition.” And ammunition being rather scanty, you have to save it whenever possible.
The game’s plot is not too complicated and contains allusions to popular games and movies (Aliens, Event Horizon, System Shock, Halo, Half-Life, etc): an unsuccessful landing of the repairs ship Kellion that had come to rescue after receiving a distress call from the mining platform Ishimura, a violent death of the pilots, a main hero being cut off from the rest of the crew. You find out the cause of all the trouble soon enough: an alien form of life had come on board Ishimura together with a mysterious artifact. And this form of life consumes organic materials. It had killed almost the entire crew in shortest time, transforming them into terrible monsters called Necromorphs.
Isaac’s goal is simple at first. He needs to reunite with the Kellion crew to find a way to get out of the infected ship, but you are up to a few surprises as the game plot makes some unexpected twists. The game’s overall atmosphere deserves highest praise. The developers have avoided the standards of Doom 3. For example, if the lights go out in the room, it doesn’t mean you are going to be attacked now. You may be attacked later on or not attacked at all – you just can’t predict it. Thus, the game turns on the paranoid part of you, making you shudder at every sound. Dead Space is indeed so scary that we wouldn’t recommend you to play it alone at night.
From the technical aspect, Dead Space is based on EA’s own game engine that supports all the features provided by modern graphics cards. The visuals are outstanding, the certain bleakness of textures typical of every multiplatform project being made up for by special effects. Theoretically, Dead Space should run at a sufficiently high speed on modest graphics cards. Let’s check this out right now.
Single graphics cards from this category cope with the game just fine. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 enjoys an advantage at low resolutions but gives way to the GeForce GTX 280 at 1920x1200. The Radeon delivers a playable frame rate even at 2560x1600, though. We want to remind you that this dual-chip monster of a graphics card costs more than Nvidia’s product and has a considerably higher power draw. Thus, the GeForce GTX 280 looks preferable from a buyer’s point of view.
Moreover, we should note a problem with CrossFire technology here. The ATI Radeon HD 4870 is somewhat faster than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. It means that the second GPU does not increase performance in this game, but lowers it instead. This is especially conspicuous with the 3-way Radeon HD 4870 subsystem that is built out of a Radeon HD 4870 X2 and a Radeon HD 4870 1GB. This subsystem just fails this test considering its price, overall clumsiness and fantastic power draw. Well, we can say almost the same about Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 280 SLI configuration: the second card provides such a small performance benefit that there is no sense in installing it, at least for playing Dead Space.
Thus, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 is the best card from this category to play Dead Space. It is followed by the ATI Radeon HD 4870 which is less expensive.
As we have already found out, the ATI Radeon HD 4870 is the leader in this category. It delivers excellent average and bottom speeds at resolutions up to 1920x1200. Second place is shared by the Radeon HD 4850 and GeForce GTX 260 but Nvidia’s product is inferior in terms of pricing and other consumer qualities such as power consumption. However, the GeForce 9800 GTX+ enters the play here. Although based on a previous-generation GPU, it is quite competitive to the GeForce GTX 260!
So, the choice is not so obvious. The Radeon HD 4870 is superior in the top segment of this price category but the bottom segment has two roughly equal solutions, Radeon HD 4850 and GeForce GTX 9800+. We would prefer the HD 4850, though, as it features a more progressive architecture.
The game’s system requirements are not too harsh, so the mainstream graphics cards do quite well, delivering good speeds at resolutions up to 1680x1050. You can get a good speed even from the outdated Radeon HD 3870 as well as from the GeForce 9600 GT which is definitely weak in terms of computing resources. And of course, the game is perfectly playable on the new Radeon HD 4830 and GeForce 9800 GT.
There is no definite leader again, but we would prefer the Radeon HD 4830 considering its modern architecture, compact size and low power consumption. Although it is somewhat slower than the GeForce 9800 GT, the difference is small and does not affect your gaming experience. You just can’t spot the lag with a naked eye until you use an fps-counting tool like Fraps.
Next goes the sequel of the legendary console series Devil May Cry. The first two games from this series were limited to PlayStation 2 but the third debuted in 2005 on the PC platform which had always felt a lack of good hack’n’slash games. The fourth game is a multiplatform project released first on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The PC version was introduced later on although the MT Framework engine, the basis of every modern project from Capcom, is a PC-based development environment. This is indicated by the additional features exclusive to the PC version such as turbo mode which accelerates the gameplay considerably and the new level of complexity called Legendary Dark Knight Mode. Thanks to the MT Framework, the PC version of Devil May Cry 4 supports DirectX 10 but can work in DirectX 9 mode that looks almost the same.
The gameplay has not changed since the earlier games of the series. Hacking and slashing through your enemies is still your routine job here. The final score of each mission depends on your fighting style, among other things. It is determined by the use of various attacking and defensive combos for which you are awarded Style Points.
As opposed to the previous games of the series, Dante is not the protagonist now. Most of the time you control a previously unknown warrior of the Order of the Sword called Nero. It is Nero and his arms – his Red Queen sword, Blue Rose revolver and demonic right arm called Devil Bringer – that are the gist of Devil May Cry 4. You will also play with Dante through 7 missions near the end of the game – the gameplay is the same as in Devil May Cry 3 then.
Devil May Cry 4 has received positive reports from game reviewers and seems to be the brightest representative of the Hack’n’Slash/Extreme Action genre on the PC platform which doesn’t really abounds in this kind of projects.
The game is highly popular, so we are going to check out its speed on different graphics cards from entry-level Radeon HD and GeForce models to dual-processor monsters like ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2. We have some apprehensions because of the fact that the Framework MT engine was also used in Lost Planet: Extreme Condition and its capabilities and performance in DirectX 10 mode are well known. Let’s check this out, though.
As opposed to Dead Space, the multi-GPU subsystems work correctly in Devil May Cry 4. ATI’s solutions are especially impressive, delivering superb scalability, whereas the performance growth accompanying the transition from one GeForce GTX 280 to two such cards is not so good. The 3-way CrossFire subsystem easily turns out over 140 frames per second even at a resolution of 2560x1600 pixels. The single ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 is far superior to the GeForce GTX 280 SLI tandem then, too.
So, if you need the highest performance possible and don’t care about the price, you should consider buying a 3-way or even a 4-way CrossFire subsystem. Otherwise you should prefer the less expensive Radeon HD 4870 X2. The single GeForce GTX 280 takes last place among premium-class graphics cards here.
It is somewhat different in the lower category: the Radeon HD 4870 and GeForce GTX 260 compete as equals at resolutions up to 1680x1050 but ATI’s solution goes ahead at 1920x1200. The GeForce GTX 260 can only compete with the Radeon HD 4850 at that resolution, delivering the same average speed but losing to the latter in every other parameter. The results of the GeForce 9800 GTX+ are disappointing. It is an outsider among the new-generation GPUs even though allows playing comfortably at resolutions up to 1920x1200.
Summing it up, ATI’s Radeon HD 4870 and 4850 are the optimal choice for playing Devil May Cry 4. The former delivers superb performance and has no rivals in sheer speed while the latter boasts an excellent ratio of price, performance and power consumption.
It is all clear in the mainstream category: the ATI Radeon HD 4830 is the unrivaled winner. It can maintain an average frame rate of 50fps and higher at a resolution of 1680x1050 pixels. The GeForce 9800 GT can’t do that. Although games of this genre do not require as high frame rates as first-person shooters to be experienced comfortably by the gamer, we recommend you to limit yourself to 1280x1024 on your GeForce 9800 GT. The same resolution should be preferred for the Radeon HD 3870 and GeForce 9600 GT.
So, the choice is clear. If you want to play at resolutions higher than 1280x1024 and have a limited budget, you should prefer the Radeon HD 4830. The other solutions from this category are roughly equal to each other. If you choose among them, you should just think about your personal preferences concerning the brand, etc.
Car simulators are not a very widespread genre in comparison with shooters or real-time strategies, yet they have always had a solid following. Race Driver: GRID is not an authentic simulator, though. This game doesn’t want to scrupulously render all the realities of driving in the real world.
The game has a lot of simplifications. Particularly, it lacks technical problems and fine-tuning options for your car, and the career mode is not too long. And still, GRID is an interesting game. It offers different classes of vehicles and types of competition, from Formula 1 to street racing. To add more excitement, there are monetary prizes and a reputation in the game although you can’t spend your money in any way other than purchasing new cars – your modification opportunities are very limited.
The physics model is quite authentic. You have to be very cautious because you won’t be able to win the race on a damaged car. The game also features high-quality visuals, especially for a multiplatform project (it has been released on the PC as well as modern game consoles including the Nintendo Wii). It runs on the EGO engine developed by Codemasters and Sony Computer Entertainment. Contrary to the current trend, the PC version does not use DirectX 10 but its visuals are detailed and its special effects look good and modern.
Combined with an exciting and eventful gameplay, this makes GRID one of the best racing games available today as confirmed by awards it has gathered from leading game reviewers. And now we will find out what graphics card you need for this game genre. You want to have a high frame rate for a car simulator just as for a first-person shooter because a high frame rate means smooth and accurate control of your car.
The GeForce GTX 280 is obviously slower than the other Premium category products in this test. It delivers good performance at resolutions up to 1920x1200 but has a barely playable frame rate at 2560x1600. The ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2, on the contrary, offers a reserve of speed even for a most fastidious virtual driver. This card is the best choice in its category because the GeForce GTX 280 SLI configuration is more expensive and less easy to install and use, and requires a SLI-compatible mainboard.
The 3-way configuration from ATI is not worth the trouble of assembling it. It is no better than the single Radeon HD 4870 X2 in terms of speed but costs much more money.
Nvidia’s solutions are on the losing side here. Just take a look at the 1920x1200 results: the Radeon HD 4870 easily yields an average 77fps and has a bottom speed of 58fps whereas the GeForce GTX 260 can’t even make it to 40fps, being twice slower than its opponent. The results of the Radeon HD 4850 are more modest, yet it delivers 60fps at 1920x1200, too.
So, Nvidia’s products are not the best choice for playing GRID. The Radeon HD 4850 is the best buy for this game. It is an inexpensive but fast graphics card.
It’s the same story again, but now only the solutions from ATI can provide an acceptable speed at 1280x1024. And the Radeon HD 4830 is the only card to have a comfortable frame rate at 1680x1050. The choice of an affordable graphics card is obvious here.
Even in its original edition The Witcher was a sensation of the RPG world in 2007. As opposed to Neverwinter Nights 2, you control only one character here, a professional monster-hunter Geralt who has lost his memory, but the game offers a sophisticated plot, rich dialogues and true-to-life situations. The Witcher lacks any moralizing and the typical division into good and evil sides you find in most other fantasy RPGs. There is a lot of good humor in the game, too.
The original game had rather simple character animations and similar-looking NPCs and monsters but the new edition corrects this issue by adding new textures and gestures.
The interface has improved somewhat, too. The camera now behaves more intellectually – the game has a third person view, so the camera’s behavior is important especially as the combat system of The Witcher is very dynamic and needs a constant control on the gamer’s part. Two new game modules are an additional bonus to the new edition. Their plot is far not as exciting as the main game’s plot, though.
The updated Witcher runs on the same Aurora Engine as the original and has no visual differences other than what have been described above. The Enhanced Edition is available for the owners of the original as a free, even though heavy, update (about 1.3GB). The game is highly popular among all RPG lovers, so we are going to see how smoothly it runs on modern graphics cards.
The updated Aurora engine needs quite a lot of resources running this visually advanced game. As you can see, none of the solutions from this category can yield a bottom speed of 25fps at 2560x1600. And the clumsy and expensive 3-way Radeon HD 4870 CrossFire subsystem is the only solution to cope with that job at 1920x1200.
The GeForce GTX 280 SLI subsystem is not much better than the corresponding single card, at least at resolutions above 1280x1024. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is the fastest card and the best buy in this category among products occupying one PCI Express x16 slot.
Strangely enough, it is better with single graphics cards: every single-chip model from the Radeon HD 4800 series can maintain a comfortable frame rate at resolutions up to 1680x1050/1600x1200 pixels. As it happens occasionally, the multi-GPU subsystems must be unable to operate correctly due to some specifics of the game engine.
Nvidia’s cards are not brilliant in this test, yet the GeForce GTX 260 is more or less good. The GeForce 9800 GTX+, on the contrary, indicates that you can’t take water from the same vessel infinitely. The time of the G80/G92 architecture has run out and even overclocking can’t make it competitive to the new-generation architecture developed by ATI.
The ATI Radeon HD 4830 stands out among the inexpensive products. It may look humble in comparison with the Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 but is head above Nvidia’s G92/94-based solutions as well as the previous generation of Radeon HD. As a result, this mainstream card allows playing normally at a resolution of 1680x1050 with maximum level of detail and 4x MSAA whereas the other representatives of the Mainstream category can’t do that.
The Radeon HD 3870 provides a comfortable speed at 1280x1024 whereas the GeForce 9800 GT, let alone the GeForce 9600 GT, are too slow even then.
Mass Effect is a very unusual and exciting representative of the RPG genre just because the plot of this game is set not in some fairy land populated with elves and dragons but in the year of 2183. So, it is a piece of science fiction. There is a lot of science fiction in video games in general, but not in RPGs which are mostly about fantasy. We can name only one sci-fi RPG similar to Mass Effect in scope and orientation – Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
The plot of the game is not exactly original, resembling popular sci-fi series such as Star Trek and Babylon 5.
Even though not related to the Star Wars world, the game universe draws upon its features heavily. It has mysterious artifacts of a defunct ancient civilization that enabled the human race to travel in space. It has a “first contact” war. It has special agents of the local counterpart of the Galactic Commonwealth, a race of sentient machines trying to kill all organic life in the galaxy, etc.
The game has a lot of indisputable highs, though. It offers an advanced character generation system that is no worse than that of TES IV: Oblivion in setup flexibility. There is a wide choice of battle classes with an original skill development system. There is no strict line between the good and the bad guys. The in-game characters play their parts well, too. Although intricate, the plot is overall linear, and you can’t join with the main evil-makers in the game. The abundance of locations has somehow affected their quality: the numerous planets are designed in the same way. This may be also due to the fact that Mass Effect has been released on the Xbox 360, besides the PC/Windows platform.
The multiplatform nature of the project affected its visuals, of course. As usual, textures suffered the most. And as is often the case, this was compensated by lots of shader-based special effects. Anyway, the developers achieved impressive results thanks to Unreal Engine 3. This engine is known for its good optimizations for a wide range of configurations, including rather modest ones. Let’s check out if this is true for Mass Effect.
Mass Effect has very large scenes and even the most advanced and expensive multi-GPU solutions have modest results at the highest graphics quality settings. There are no obvious winners in the Premium category. The GeForce GTX 280 is better at 1280x1024 but loses its ground at the higher resolutions whereas the Radeon HD 4870 X2 maintains about the same speed at every resolution.
As for the multi-GPU subsystems occupying more than one PCI Express slot, the GeForce GTX 280 SLI is the only one of them to keep the bottom speed above 20fps at every resolution. The 3-way CrossFire subsystem (built out of a Radeon HD 4870 X2 and Radeon HD 4870 1GB) does not provide any performance benefits and becomes the loser in terms of price/performance ratio.
There are no leaders in this category at 1280x1024 resolution but the Radeon HD 4800 series goes ahead in higher resolutions. Therefore the best buy in this category is the Radeon HD 4850. At a modest price it delivers good performance at both 1680x1050 and 1920x1200.
The Radeon HD 3870 is almost as fast as the Radeon HD 4830 at 1280x1024 but its bottom speed drops at the higher resolutions due to its weak TMU subsystem. Nvidia’s solutions are no better, though. Thus, the Radeon HD 4830 is the best choice among inexpensive gaming cards for playing this game.
The gaming community was waiting eagerly for a sequel to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl since the official announcement of its development. The original game had gathered an army of active fans who had taken efforts to get rid of its numerous defects and imperfections and released a series of unofficial modifications to bring the game closer to ideal. They hoped their recommendations would be implemented in Clear Sky. Well, these hopes never came true.
Clear Sky is actually a prequel to the events described in Shadow of Chernobyl. The plot is not much different, though. The only difference is that the mysterious Strelok is being hunted not by himself after having lost his memory, but by a mercenary called Scar. The protagonist must also make out what is going on in the Zone. That’s not very original, but the game features new monsters, locations and the opportunity to join with one of the numerous stalker gangs. The gameplay has become better because the anomalies are now harder to detect while precious artifacts do not lie in the open, attracting the gamer with their shimmer.
The game has also become prettier due to the improved engine. The new version of X-Ray Engine now supports DirectX 10 and a number of interesting special effect such as volumetric lighting, fog, fire, “soft” water, dynamic soft shadows, etc. Volumetric lighting is especially impressive, making the game more realistic visually. Alas, it is accompanied with a terrible performance hit, but the effect itself is worth looking at. Thus, the visual part of Clear Sky deserves highest praise even though the most beautiful and realistic effects prove to be hard for the computer’s graphics subsystem.
But that’s where the good points of the new game end. While you can put up with the lack of novelty in gameplay, technical defects are not so easily condoned. There are a lot of them in Clear Sky and they are not limited to the stupidity of the AI. The first version of the game was most unstable due to bugs in its code. The game could crash on loading a save and you had to replay it from the start. A series of patches have improved the issue and walking Clear Sky through is not an impossible mission anymore, so we have decided to include it into this review to check out the game from the performance standpoint.
Using all the advanced capabilities of X-Ray Engine 1.5 is too hard a task even for the most advanced multi-GPU solutions available today, let alone single, even though premium-class, graphics cards. None of the graphics subsystems provides an acceptable speed even at 1280x1024. Considering the good scalability of ATI’s technology, we suspect a 4-way Radeon HD 4870 CrossFireX would do that, but the price and power consumption of such a subsystem are beyond reasonable.
However, the results indicate one thing: the use of the advanced DirectX 10 capabilities helps ATI’s solutions get an advantage as their architecture is suited better for such work. Nvidia has no superiority in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. anymore.
Nvidia is competitive in this category. The GeForce 9800 GTX+ is but slightly slower than the Radeon HD 4850 whereas the GeForce GTX 260 is comparable to the Radeon HD 4870 at 1280x1024. Anyway, the average and bottom speed of every card of this class is so low that you can’t play the game normally unless you disable some effects and lower the level of detail.
Every card from this category is slow, but we have a winner. The GeForce 9800 GT outperforms the Radeon HD 4830 by 35-40%. We don’t know the reason for the poor results of the Radeon HD 4830. Perhaps it just has too few texture processors that are also clocked at a rather low frequency.
Here is another project from EA to you. But while the genre of Dead Space can be ascertained instantly, Spore is not so easily classified. We guess it is a kind of a global strategy or a god simulator. The latter term is often used to refer to games like Civilization but Spore is more far-reaching. The civilized phase takes only about one half of the game whereas the other half is a simulator of evolution that begins with a unicellular form of life accidentally brought to the planet by a meteorite.
The unicellular phase is a funny two-dimensional arcade in which you have to fight for survival with other unicellular organisms inhabiting the prehistoric ocean. The winning strategy is determined by the choice of the nutrition method. If you go the carnivorous way, you have to hunt various unicellular creatures of the “prehistoric soup,” increasing the attacking potential of your bacterium by digesting pieces of DNA. Otherwise the hunter can easily find itself to be the victim. If you choose the herbivorous way, the DNA fragments you get should be invested into increasing your speed, maneuverability and defensive means to avoid any monsters who might want to eat you. If you are lucky enough, you can even acquire an omnivorous digestive organ to become a truly universal creature.
Once you get to a requisite amount of DNA, you can get legs and move on to the next level of evolution, i.e. become a land creature. It is at that moment that one of the longest and interesting parts of Spore begins. Although the point remains the same, the gameplay gets more variegated. The world is three-dimensional now, and you can become friends with other species. The amount of available DNA “bricks” is so huge that you can realize almost any possible fantasy about an ideal creature – you only have to accumulate enough of the building blocks. The size of the creature’s brain is increasing as its evolution goes on and this phase ends in your creature becoming intelligent which is indicated by a funny scene alluding to the well-known episode with the apes from Kubrick’s A Space Odyssey 2001.
The civilization phase consists of two steps: village/tribe and town-based. Both feature RTS-like gameplay. Both steps offer two main ways to victory: a peaceful one and a war. To win peacefully, you must conclude as many unions with your neighbors as possible. Or you can win by conquering them. The village-based step is quite interesting but the town-based step is rather too simple, being even less exciting than the first RTS on the PC, the legendary Dune 2. We guess it is the weakest part of the game, even though it offers such opportunities as designing machines and buildings from scratch.
In the final phase of Spore the civilization goes out into space. Unfortunately, the most beautiful part also has the simplest gameplay. You have only one spaceship and your gameplay boils down to roaming the vast galaxy inhabited by numerous civilizations. The only entertainment options you have are terramorfing or destroying planets depending on your mood and current mission.
The game uses several graphics engines depending on the phase you play in. As becomes such an ambitious project, every phase is a treat to the eye, even though the visuals may look simple sometimes. Spore has a frame rate limiter fixed at 30fps. Despite this fact, the test results may be interesting, at least for owners of mainstream and inexpensive graphics cards.
Like some other games from EA, Spore has a frame rate limiter set at 30fps. We could not turn it off, so the identical results of the premium graphics solutions are not to be wondered at. They do not differ in bottom speed, either. Thus, every premium-class graphics solution is equally suitable for playing Spore.
There is no difference between the cards at 1280x1024. At 1680x1050 the GeForce 9800 GTX+ doesn’t reach the speed limit, though. This card is even uncomfortably slow at 1920x1200 while the GeForce GTX 260 doesn’t reach the limit at that resolution.
Thus, the Radeon HD 4850 seems to be the optimal choice for playing Spore since the more expensive Radeon HD 4870 does not provide any advantages while the GeForce 9800 GTX+ is not fast at high resolutions.
As you can see, Spore can make a good benchmarking tool despite the speed limitation, especially for inexpensive graphics cards. There is one loser at 1280x1024 – the Radeon HD 3870. At 1680x1050 the GeForce 9800 GT is the only card to reach the speed limit. The Radeon HD 4830 is not far slower, but Nvidia’s card is a better choice for this game.
We have test data on 12 graphics cards in seven games that enable us to make recommendations about upgrading your gaming platform. We are going to use summary diagrams for the sake of readability.
The ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 stands out among single graphics cards. Well, it has one PCB but two RV770 processors, being in fact a single-PCB CrossFire subsystem. It is everywhere faster than Nvidia’s flagship GeForce GTX 280 and sometimes faster than the SLI configuration built out of two GTX 280 cards.
The display resolutions of 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 pixels are the most important ones in this price category as you won’t pay $400-500 to play at low resolutions. At 1920x1200 the Radeon HD 4870 X2 wins five out of the seven tests, hitting the performance limit in Spore and losing in Dead Space only because of its dual-processor architecture. Its frame rate remained comfortable even in the latter case, the gap from the GeForce GTX 280 being only 10% then. The overall picture is the same at 2560x1600.
The choice in this category may seem obvious but you should keep it in mind that the highest performance of the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 card is accompanied with a high level of power consumption, heat dissipation and noise and the potential problems typical of homogeneous multi-GPU solutions this card belongs to. Besides, it is considerably more expensive than Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 280. Notwithstanding the conservative architecture, the latter remains the fastest single-processor graphics card available today. It will make a good choice if you don’t want to play at 2560x1600 and don’t want to have the 250W heater of a dual-core Radeon inside your computer.
As for the multi-GPU solutions included into the Premium category, they do not seem worth the trouble of buying and assembling them because of the small performance benefits they provide. This is especially true for the 3-way ATI Radeon HD 4870 CrossFireX subsystem that only provides a substantial performance gain in The Witcher and Devil May Cry: 4. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 SLI subsystem sported good scalability in Mass Effect and Race Driver: GRID, but that’s not enough for us to recommend you to build it unless you absolutely don’t care about how much money it will cost you.
The Performance-Mainstream category seems to be the only one where your shopping choice is obvious. We recommend you the ATI Radeon HD 4870 which was ahead of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 in each of our seven games at both resolutions (1680x1050 and 1920x1200). We should note that we benchmarked the older version of the latter card that had 192 shader and 64 texture processors active. The newer version with 216 and 72 such processors wouldn’t be any faster than the successful and well-balanced solution from ATI, though.
The ATI Radeon HD 4850 is superior in the bottom sector of this market segment. This graphics card has already earned high popularity among PC gamers. Dead Space is the only game where it is slightly inferior to the Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+, yet it provides a comfortable frame rate even then. In other words, the Nvidia G92 architecture has exhausted its potential. Transitioning to a thinner tech process or increasing clock rates can but delay the agony for a little while. Nvidia definitely needs a new-generation mainstream GPU capable of competing with ATI’s RV770.
Thus, the choice in the Performance-Mainstream category is simple: you should prefer the ATI Radeon HD 4870 or, if you want to save a little, ATI Radeon HD 4850. Both solutions boast a superb price/performance ratio as opposed to Nvidia’s products, especially to the GeForce GTX 260 which is no better than the Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ in some tests.
Among the most affordable gaming graphics cards the ATI Radeon HD 4830 is the brightest star. This might be expected considering the origin of that card. It is a cut-down Radeon HD 4850, but the amputation wasn’t too harsh, so the result is impressive. Priced at less than $150, this graphics card delivers very good performance, being inferior to the Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT only in Dead Space and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky but the gap is small in the former game and you can play normally at 1680x1050 with maximum graphics quality settings.
Well, the Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT turned in a good performance too, despite the outdated architecture and cut-down configuration of the graphics core. It can be recommended for purchase as well, especially if its retail price proves to be lower than that of the Radeon HD 4830.
The Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT, ATI Radeon HD 3870 and ATI Radeon HD 4670 are not truly gaming cards if you want to play modern games at highest resolutions and maximum graphics quality settings available.
We have to admit that our preference lies with ATI’s solutions nearly everywhere. This is yet another proof of the wise choice of development strategy undertaken by the graphics department of AMD. It is only in the Premium category that the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 and Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 compete on equal terms just because the former is costlier and consumes more power and may have problems with multi-GPU support in the ATI Catalyst driver. In the other categories the models of the ATI Radeon HD 4800 series are preferable. Each of them is 100% worth the money asked. Nvidia must hurry up with the release of a new-generation mainstream GPU. Otherwise it will go on losing its influence on the market of discrete graphics hardware just it is doing right now.