X-bit labs

The Second Encounter: DirectX 10 Games vs. Contemporary Graphics Accelerators (page 11)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko, Anton Shilov

[ 10/26/2007 | 02:20 PM ]

PT Boats: Knights of the Sea demo

The game is going to be a very demanding application, and its predilection towards Nvidia’s solutions is clear as well (this game takes part in Nvidia’s The Way It’s Meant to Be Played program). The GeForce 8800 GTX offers acceptable performance in every resolution while the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB is only good for 1280x1024 due to its very low minimum of speed in the higher display modes. The ATI Radeon HD 2900 series looks rather deplorable in this test, the senior model not being able to keep the frame rate at 30fps even. Perhaps there’ll be improvements with newer versions of Catalyst or in the full version of the game.

PT Boats wouldn’t start up on the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB just like the Call of Juarez DX10 demo had done. The system would hang up, show a BSOD, etc.

You have to pay a high price for enabling FSAA in PT Boats: even the GeForce 8800 GTX cannot cope with the task, its minimum speed sinking below the allowable 25fps. The other cards lose more speed, especially the ATI Radeon HD 2900 solutions. It’s clear that enabling 4x FSAA in this game won’t be a good idea even in the full version of the game.

As it is the case with every other demo version, it’s too early to make a final verdict on PT Boats since everything can change with the release of the final version of the game. So far, Nvidia’s solutions look better than ATI’s Radeons.