Conclusion

Now that we tested eight widely available and relatively inexpensive graphics accelerators in nine popular massively multiplayer online RPG we can conclude with sufficient certainty that this gaming genre as a rule doesn’t require a powerful graphics accelerator. Most today’s testing participants ensured sufficient gaming performance in all tests. However, there were a few exceptions that we are going to discuss in detail now.

Even in 1280х1024 Age of Conan turned out pretty demanding with maximum level of detail. The only graphics card that ensured more or less acceptable performance in this game was the not so cheap GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, but even it failed to maintain minimal performance at 25 fps. In Perfect World game two weakest graphics accelerators of our today’s testing participants - Radeon HD 4670 and GeForce 9600 GT – showed too low minimal performance readings. In all other cases all graphics solutions ran fast enough to make gaming possible if no antialiasing was enabled.

Age of Conan became an exception again in the next resolution. Here you will either need a more powerful graphics accelerator than GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, or will have to give up some image quality settings for the sake of sufficient performance. The situation in Perfect World also became more serious: Radeon HD 4670 and all Nvidia based solutions proved unable to maintain the minimal performance at an acceptable level. And in World of Warcraft we lost GeForce 9600 GT.

In 1920х1200 the performance of all testing participants in Age of Conan is below all acceptable levels and it is very unlikely to be that much higher in the 1920x1080 resolution that becomes more and more popular these days. I doubt that even GeForce GTX 295 could help here. Either way, the gamer will have to sacrifice some of the image quality settings. The results in some other games such as LotR Online for instance, indicate that Radeon HD 4670 class of graphics accelerators can’t cope with this resolution, although in Eve Online, Requiem and Warhammer they are powerful enough even for the monitors supporting 1920х1200 resolution.

We have to pay special attention to the antialiasing matter. Not all today’s testing participants support it in the first place. But even with FSAA 4x an MMORPG fan may do just fine with a Radeon HD 4770 or Radeon HD 4850 without investing a ton into a GeForce GTX 295 or Radeon HD 4870 X2 type solution. However, Radeon HD 4670 or GeForce 9600 GT class of cards are not among the possible choices here, especially if we are talking about resolutions exceeding 1280х1024.

Overall, as we have expected there are two leaders in our today’s race: GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 as a solution with highest absolute performance, and Radeon HD 4770 as a solution combining relatively high performance with energy-efficiency and low price. Our personal preferences seem to be on Radeon HD 4770’s side as it has proven to be a true people’s product: cheap, universal, energy-efficient but at the same time fast enough and perfectly fit for contemporary MMORPG.