Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends Performance

Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends is a real time strategy (RTS) game similar to Warcraft and Command and Conquer. Our test for Rise of Legends is similar to our tests for other RTS games as well. We are able to save replays of entire games and play them back. We use FRAPS to benchmark the game, though we benchmark the game while playing it back at 4x normal speed. This is simply to save time benchmarking, and the results still allow us to report on in game experience.

The benchmark is a 2v2 internet battle. The battle is just over 20 minutes long, and we start our FRAPS benchmark at 8 minutes in when the action starts and stop the benchmark just before the end of the game. Rise of Legends is sensitive to CPU speed, so gamers with less powerful platforms shouldn't rely only on this data to determine final performance with Rise of Legends.

Frame rates of about 20 fps are acceptable as we don't need the consistency and smoothness of a higher framerate to enable effective gameplay. Framerate drops and slow downs are not as noticeable in games like this where quick movements aren't what it's all about.

Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends Performance

The only reason the 6600 GT remains playable at this resolution is because the game prohibits the selection of the highest quality options due to the lack of 256MB of RAM. The X800 GTO and X1600 XT fall just under playable range, but some people may be able to live with a little bit of jerkiness here and there with their RTS games.


*This card features only 128mb RAM, limiting it to medium quality settings

The 7900 GT scales better than the X1900 GT and so closes the gap towards the higher resolutions, but still can't make the pass. Even with equal performance, the X1900 GT would still lead in terms of value. Our 7600 GT remains playable at 1920x1440, but once again just a little higher budget will get a great benefit with the X1900 GT with about 33% higher performance and the ability to enable AA and remain playable if necessary.

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  • DerekWilson - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link

    look again :-) It should be fixed.
  • pervisanathema - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link

    You post hard to read line graphs of the benchmarks that show the X1900XT crushing the 7900GT with AA/AF enabled.

    Then you post easy to read bar charts of an O/Ced 7900GT barely eeking out a victory over the X1900XT ins some benchmarks and you forget to turn on AA/AF.

    I am not accussing you guys of bias but you make it very easy to draw that conclusion.
  • yyrkoon - Sunday, August 13, 2006 - link

    Well, I cannot speak for the rest of the benchmarks, but owning a 7600GT, AND Oblivion, I find the Oblivion benchmarks not accurate.

    My system:

    Asrock AM2NF4G-SATA2
    AMD AM2 3800+
    2GB Corsair DDR2 6400 (4-4-4-12)
    eVGA 7600GT KO

    The rest is pretty much irrelivent. With this system, I play @ 1440x900, with high settings, simular to the benchmark settings, and the lowest I get is 29 FPS under heavey combat(lots of NPCs on screen, and attacking me.). Average FPS in town, 44 FPS, wilderness 44 FPS, dungeon 110 FPS. I'd also like to note, that compared to my AMD 3200+ XP / 6600GT system, the game is much more fluid / playable.

    Anyhow, keep up the good work guys, I just find your benchmarks wrong from my perspective.
  • Warder45 - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link

    The type of chart used just depends on if they tested multiple resolutions vs a single resolution.

    Similar to your complaint, I could say they are bias towards ATI by showing how the X1900XT had better marks across all resolutions tested yet only tested the 7900GT OC at one resolution not giveing it the chance to prove itself.

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