Call of Juarez

Call of Juarez is one of the earliest DirectX10 games from the Polish developer Techland. It is a First Person Shooter set in the Wild West, loosely based on a number of Western movie hits which were popular in the sixties and early seventies. Call of Juarez uses the Chrome Engine which utilizes modern game programming technologies and techniques such as  High Dynamic Range (HDR) rendering, Support for all modern per-pixel lighting and rendering techniques including normal mapping, relief mapping, self-shadowing using ambient occlusion, subsurface scattering simulating diffusion and diffraction of rays finding their way through translucent objects; realistic water surfaces based on dynamic liquid system, real time HDR reflections and refraction, fading underwater visibility based on distance.

We used the benchmark tool that is added to the game with the patch 1.1.1.0. Since this game is very tough on even high end video cards, a HD 4650 was not able to play it smoothly at 1280×1024 with the highest settings. So we have split the settings into a “Best Playable” and “Highest Quality” at 1280×1024 resolution. In the “Best Playable” setting we have tried to achieve an average framerate of 25.

Here are the “Best Playable” Settings:

In this benchmark, there is not much of a difference between the two CPUs except when used with a HD 4770.

Next up is the “Highest Settings” category.

The extra cache in the Phenom II X2 550 does not give it a significant advantage over the Athlon II X2 250.

Let’s take a look at the benchmark running with the same max settings, but now running at 1920×1200:

The trend continues when the resolution is cranked up to 1920×1200. Both the configurations produce almost identical results.