Big GPU-Shootout; Part III, PCIe 1.0 vs. PCIe 2.0
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
The railing shows the in-game "AA"
S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Shadows of Chernobyl is a first person shooter by GSC Game World, published in 2007. This game has a non-linear storyline and features role playing gameplay elements such as trading and allying with NPC factions. In S.T.A.L.K.E.R., the player assumes the identity of “The Marked One” – an amnesiac illegal artifact scavenger in “The Zone” which encompasses roughly 30 square kilometers. It is the location of an alternate reality story surrounding the Chernobyl Power Plant after another (fictitious) explosion. GSC Game World released a prequel story expansion on September 5, 2008 as Prologue: S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Clear Sky, and it has just become a brand new DX10 benchmark for us.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. features “a living breathing world” with highly developed NPC creature AI. It uses the X-ray Engine – a DirectX8.1/9 Shader model 3.0 graphics engine featuring HDR, parralax and normal mapping, soft shadows, motion blur, weather effects and day-to-night cycles. As with other engines using deferred shading, the X-ray Engine does not support anti-alising with dynamic lighting enabled. However, a form of anti-aliasing can be enabled that uses a technique to blur the image to give an impression of anti-aliasing. We set all the graphical options – including “AA” – to their maximum values.
Our benchmarks for this DX9c game are timedemo runs called “short” and “building”. Their flaw would be that the maximum frame rates are skewed way too high as the camera pans the sky. The maximums should mostly be disregarded although the minimums and averages are fairly representative of what you actually encounter in game. Even the best video cards will suffer stutters occasionally although the general gameplay is better than the minimum suggests.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Buildings and Short Benchmarks
Now at 1680×1050:
The results are almost too mixed to draw conclusions at first look. However, at the average and minimum, GTX280 is a bit faster on the X48 motherboard as is 4870. 4870-1GB is more capable than the 512MB version at the higher of the two resolutions and crossfireX-3 on X48 beats the same configuration on the more bandwidth starved P35. The “true” crossfire-X3 pulls solid minimums over “frankenfire” with a 512MB 4870 paired with the 2GB 4870-X2.
Curious, why’d you set Catalyst A.I. to “Advanced”?
How about a few links to explanations of Catalyst AI and what “advanced” really does? Here is an old article on it:
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjY2LDI=
Here is the tweak guide which supports my own research:
http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_7.html
“Catalyst A.I. allows users to determine the level of ‘optimizations’ the drivers enable in graphics applications. These optimizations are graphics ‘short cuts’ which the Catalyst A.I. calculates to attempt to improve the performance of 3D games without any noticeable reduction in image quality. In the past there has been a great deal of controversy about ‘hidden optimizations’, where both Nvidia and ATI were accused of cutting corners, reducing image quality in subtle ways by reducing image precision for example, simply to get higher scores in synthetic benchmarks like 3DMark. In response to this, both ATI and Nvidia have made the process transparent to a great extent. You can select whether you want to enable or disable Catalyst A.I. for a further potential performance boost in return for possibly a slight reduction in image quality in some cases. If Catalyst AI is enabled, you can also choose the aggressiveness of such optimizations, either Standard or Advanced on the slider. The Advanced setting ensures maximum performance, and usually results in no problems or any noticeable image quality reduction. If on the other hand you want to always ensure the highest possible image quality at all costs, disable Catalyst A.I. (tick the ‘Disable Catalyst A.I.’ box). I recommend leaving Catalyst A.I enabled unless you experience problems. ATI have made it clear that many application-specific optimizations for recent games such as Oblivion are dependent on Catalyst AI being enabled.
Note: As of the 6.7 Catalysts, Crossfire users should set Catalyst A.I. to Advanced to force Alternate Frame Rendering (AFR) mode in all Direct3D games for optimal performance. Once again, Catalyst A.I. should only be disabled for troubleshooting purposes, such as if you notice image corruption in particular games”
In other words, one can choose the aggressiveness of your optimizations, either “Standard” or “Advanced”. The Advanced setting ensures maximum performance – as for benchmarking games – and with no noticeable image quality reduction. However, if you are doing IQ comparisons as BFG10K did, and want to guarantee the very highest image quality, then disable Catalyst A.I. [but not for crossfire; set it to “Standard”]. I have always recommended leaving Catalyst A.I enabled unless you experience any glitches in games.
You have to realize that Cat AI is not necessarily supposed to give you a boost in every single game. It tries to do optimizations, if possible, but many times these are either not possible with a particular game, or the settings you’ve chosen in the game may be too low for it to make any noticeable impact.
That is why I recommend leaving it on “Advanced”; you get a possisble performance boost; if not then you lose nothing. Or you can set it to standard or off if you feel your image quality is being degraded.
Hope that explains it.
Very interesting, I’ll definitely be I check your site on a regular basis now.