Black and White 2 v.1.2 Performance Update

Performance Tests

We've shown scores from Black and White 2 in the past, but these new numbers give us a better idea of the current post-patch performance. We would assume that's the way most people will want to play the game, assuming they're still playing it. The 1.2 patch definitely helps ATI's performance, and this also gives us the opportunity to see how the latest NVIDIA and ATI cards perform relative to other offerings.







At the highest resolutions and with AA set to "High", we see a bit of memory limitation even with the fastest cards. This isn't too surprising, given the number of pixels being processed, but the game still runs beautifully and smoothly on the 7800 GTX 512, 7900 GTX, and both X1900s here. For those keeping score, the latest patch now allows X1900 cards to claim the top spots.

We didn't include the 7800 GTX (normal) numbers because we've seen previously how its performance is nearly identical to the new 7900 GT. The X1800 XL struggles with the demo at these resolutions, but the game is generally playable at 1280x1024 with high AA mode (see below) - some may even find 1600x1200 with high AA to be acceptable; remember that this is not a twitch game like most FPS titles, so 40+ frame rates aren't required.







Moving to the mid-range cards, we can again see how the recent patch helped ATI in performance. The NVIDIA numbers no longer dominate ATI's, and in fact the benchmarks tend to favor ATI as we saw with the high-end cards.

One interesting thing we see is how similar the X1800 GTO and XL numbers are. With the X1800 GTO already on the market for much less money than the X1800 XL, the GTO's better value is obvious. We'll have more on this soon. The 7600 GT also competes extremely well in the mid-range category, considering the price.







Something that is immediately noticeable in the low-end cards (on the bottom graph) is that the 6200 TC shows higher performance than the 7300 GS even though it is the least powerful of the two. The reason for this is that with the 6200 TC installed, Black and White 2 blanked out certain options that are normally available such as bloom and distortion effects. This obviously made the game run faster, but at the cost of the graphics and consequently, the game appeared very flat and dull graphically.

This game isn't well suited for lower-end cards, as these frame rates show. True, you may be able to play it, and it might be very enjoyable, but to get the most out of Black and White 2 you'll probably need at least a mid-range card.