Lost Planet
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition is a Capcom port of an Xbox 360 game. It takes place on the icy planet of E.D.N. III which is filled with monsters, pirates, big guns, and huge bosses. This frozen world highlights high dynamic range lighting (HDR) as the snow-white environment reflects blinding sunlight as DX10 particle systems toss snow and ice all around. The game looks great in both DirectX 9 and 10 and there isn’t really much of a difference between the two versions except perhaps shadows. Unfortunately, the DX10 version doesn’t look that much better when you’re actually playing the game and it still runs slower than the DX9 version.
We use the in-game performance test from the retail copy of Lost Planet and updated through Steam to the latest version for our runs. This run isn’t completely scripted as the creatures act a little differently each time you run it, requiring multiple runs. Lost Planet’s Snow and Cave demos are run continuously by the performance test and blend into each other.Here are our benchmark results with the more demanding benchmark, Snow. All settings are fully maxed out in-game including 4xAA/16xAF.
Let’s start with 2560X1600. Please note that there is a typo in the GTX 480′s maximum FPS; instead of 85, it should read 52 FPS.
Now at 1920×1200 resolution:
Finally at 1680×1050:
All of our top cards are tightly grouped. For the averages, the GTX 480 edges the top two Radeons but then stumbles very slightly compared to the HD 5870 at 2560×1600. Performance is too close to call.