WSGF Benchmarking

From WSGFWiki

This article catalogs our ongoing efforts to test and benchmark at the WSGF. One of the most frequent questions we get is, "What kind of card do I need to run XXX game on YYY system?" In the early days of the site, the system used to be something based on a 24" or 30" panel. Over recent years that question has moved to encompass Surround and now Wide Surround systems. Jump over to this forum thread to discuss the benchmarks in this series.

09-Mar-10 Benchmarks comparing the Radeon 5870 with Catalyst 9.11 and 10.3 Preview. Some strong performance games in a number of titles, to go along with the new features that have been rolling out. Games highlighting the performance gains are:

• Batman: Arkham Asylum
• Dirt 2
• H.A.W.X
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R Call of Pripyat - Night Benchmark Demo

11-Dec-09 Benchmarks of the Radeon 5870 with Win7. Largely an exercise in resetting our baselines on a clean install of the new OS. We did see some major performance increases for Half-Life 2 at 1680x1050 and 1920x1200. We also saw some solid improvement at 5760x1200 in Ultra High w/ 8xAA. Still unplayable at that level, but it showcases improvements other sites haven't found. Games tested are:

• Half-Life 2: Episode 2 (32-bit)
• Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
• Far Cry 2

24-Nov-09 Benchmarks of the Radeon 5870. We compare its peformance to all of the NVIDIA benchmarks we've previously done. We also continued the analysis of Far Cry in every Quality/AA mix (at Wide Surround 5040x1050 and 5760x1200) from High/0xAA all the way to Ultra/4xAA. Finally, we ended up dropping Trackmania due to inconsistency in the benchmark. Games tested are:

• Half-Life 2: Episode 2 (32-bit)
• Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
• Far Cry 2

08-Aug-09 Put the new Batman: Arkham Asylum Demo though its paces on the GTX 295. Tested 18 combinations of Graphical Detail/Quality, AA and PhysX Quality at 5040x1050. Everything at max brings the GTX 295 to its knees, but there are plenty of options available. Also tested max settings at 1680x1050 through 5040x1050. Games tested are:

• Batman: Arkham Asylum Demo

28-Jul-09 Second in the NVIDIA 200-series benchmarks. This time we add GTX 275 1792MB SLI to the mix. Additionally, we ran a comparison of Half-Life 2 in both 32-bit and 64-bit modes. (Hint: 64-bit should be avoided, especially in SLI). We also continued the analysis of Far Cry in every Quality/AA mix (at Wide Surround 5040x1050) from High/0xAA all the way to Ultra/4xAA. Finally, we ended up dropping World in Conflict due to inconsistency in the benchmark. Games tested are:

• Half-Life 2: Episode 2 (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
• Far Cry 2
• Trackmania Nations

07-Jul-09 Reset of benchmarks for Core i7 920 and GTX 295 on Vista with 12GB of RAM. Additionally, we have run a series of benchmarks on the EVGA GTX 896MB & 1792MB cards. The GTX 275 benchmarks also contain the GTX 295 data for comparison. Games tested are:

• Half-Life 2: Episode 2
• Far Cry 2
• Trackmania Nations
• World in Conflict

21-Jan-09 Benchmarks for an Intel Core i7 920 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295. Test bed was a stock clocked Core i7 920 on an EVGA X58 motherboard, with 6GB of RAM running on WinXP. Based on the findings from the i7/9800GX2 testing, we dropped a number of low end resolutions. Tested 1600x1200 through 2560x1600 in Widescreen, and through 5040x1050 in Wide Surround. Games tested were:

• Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
• World in Conflict
• Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar
• Overlord
• Half-Life 2: Episode 2
• Far Cry 2
• Crysis Warhead

13-Jan-09 Benchmarks for an Intel Core i7 920 & NVIDIA GeForce 9800GX2. Test bed was a stock clocked Core i7 920 on an EVGA X58 motherboard, with 6GB of RAM running on WinXP. Tested 1024x768 through 2560x1600 in Widescreen, and through 5040x1050 in Wide Surround. Dropped Company of Heroes, Bioshock and Oblivion from testing (reasons given in the article). Games tested were:

• Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
• World in Conflict
• Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar
• Overlord

11-Jun-08 Widescreen and Surround Benchmarking Suite that compares the impact of FOV versus pixels on graphics performance. This analysis is based on the GeForce 9800GX2 data below. We found that while increasing resolution does have a steady impact on performance, and increasing FOV has a greater impact. 1280x1024 often performs better than 1024x768, due to a narrower FOV. And, once you cross into the Surround territory (which has a significant impact on performance), the difference between Surround resolutions is often negligible.

11-Jun-08 Benchmarks and Review of the NVIDIA GeForce 9800GX2. Test bed was a Core2Duo E6700 on an nForce 590 motherboard, with 2GB of RAM running on WinXP. Tested 1024x768 through 2560x1600 in Widescreen, and through 3840x1024 in Surround. Games tested were:

• Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
• World in Conflict
• Bioshock
• Company of Heroes
• Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar
• Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
• Overlord