2560×1600 Performance Investigation (updated)

Article Update: I’ve added a 0xAA section which tests nine newer titles.

Introduction

My stalwart 19” CRT died a few months ago and that put me in the market for a new display. With displays as they are right now, the best option for my gaming habits was a 30” LCD so I could reach the lofty resolution of 2560×1600.

What’s so special about 2560×1600 you ask? Take a look at the relative pixel counts:

2560×1600 = 4096000.
1920×1200 = 2304000.
1920×1080 = 2073600.

As you can see, 2560×1600 is over 4 million pixels and has around twice the pixel count of the two 1920 modes. To push that many pixels the GPU requires a lot more grunt, and also a lot of VRAM to make everything fit locally.

Now that I have the display, I’ve completed a range of benchmarks at said resolution on my GTX285, and compared them to my GTX260+. This article can also serve as part 2 of the GTX285 vs GTX260+ vs 4850 article I did a little while ago.

Transparency AA will also be used where possible and playable, with SS denoting super-sampling, and MS denoting multi-sampling.

The text charts are also color coded as usual, but since the GTX285 completes a clean sweep in the benchmarks, only one purple highlight in the % Change column is required.