Splinter Cell: Double Agent: A Performance Analysis
by Josh Venning on December 8, 2006 2:10 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
Splinter Cell: Double Agent is a very enjoyable game in spite of its bugs, and it does justice to the Splinter Cell series. While there are areas where the graphics could be improved, the SM3.0 effects make the game look very good. Sam Fisher and the other characters look better than in previous Splinter Cell games, and you can see the attention to detail the developers had with things like beard stubble and the sweat on his skin.
The gameplay is different than in previous Splinter Cells, and it's fun being able to play as a double agent, infiltrating the ranks of a secret terrorist organization. The game also gets harder as you progress, and it can get complicated trying to juggle objectives for both the NSA and JBA, but the greater challenges make the game that much more enjoyable. Playing the game in scenarios where there is broad daylight, which you have to do in much of the game, makes for an interesting challenge as well, especially for those who are familiar with the Splinter Cell series and are more comfortable slinking around in the dark like a cowardly harbinger of death.
Looking at performance with Double Agent, our tests clearly show that ATI cards get better performance compared to their direct-price competition from NVIDIA. There are a lot of potential reasons as to why this is the case, but we suspect it has something to do with a rush from the publisher to get the PC version of this Xbox 360 game out the door. We saw similar issues with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which favored ATI hardware more than NVIDIA at the time of its release. Some NVIDIA cards run Double Agent well, but because of the fact that ATI did better over all at running the game than NVIDIA, an ATI part would be the wiser choice if you were looking for a card solely to run this game. Also, as we said earlier, Double Agent seems to run much more stably with ATI's hardware (without bugs, crashes, etc.) as opposed to NVIDIA's.
The fact that the game runs better on ATI hardware than NVIDIA's parts could come from a variety of factors - drivers, the programmers, and/or the specific types of shaders/effects used in the game. We can speculate (and hope) that as we saw with Oblivion, patches and driver updates will possibly fix the bugs and close the gap in performance between ATI and NVIDIA with this game. Even so, the fact that Splinter Cell: Double Agent does not currently support the NVIDIA 8800 series is unacceptable. Also, the problems with SLI and CrossFire are unfortunate, and it would have been nice if support had been provided for multi-GPU solutions. It may be possible that some of the effects used just aren't going to benefit from multi-GPU configurations, but whether or not Ubisoft puts any time in to fixing this, ATI and NVIDIA will almost certainly be looking for a solution.
Overall the game feels rushed, not in the storyline or gameplay necessarily, but in basic things like the interface and overall game stability. There are a lot of hardware incompatibilities which will leave some people, especially 8800 owners, with no current means to play the game after paying up their hard-earned money to buy it. It might be more understandable if the problems were with older-generation cards that were phased out, but on the 8800 - NVIDIA's flagship solution for highest performance - it's just not right.
We aren't sure why this latest addition to the Splinter Cell series was released with so many problems. Even though we've seen similar issues with newly-released games in the past, Double Agent happens to have more problems than usual for a game of this type. At any rate, we hope there will be some patches released soon that will fix these major issues. They should have been addressed before Double Agent's release, but the holiday season can cause some unfortunate effects on things like product launches. In the mean time, hopefully you have a better idea of how GPU performance stacks up in something other than a FPS for a change.
Splinter Cell: Double Agent is a very enjoyable game in spite of its bugs, and it does justice to the Splinter Cell series. While there are areas where the graphics could be improved, the SM3.0 effects make the game look very good. Sam Fisher and the other characters look better than in previous Splinter Cell games, and you can see the attention to detail the developers had with things like beard stubble and the sweat on his skin.
The gameplay is different than in previous Splinter Cells, and it's fun being able to play as a double agent, infiltrating the ranks of a secret terrorist organization. The game also gets harder as you progress, and it can get complicated trying to juggle objectives for both the NSA and JBA, but the greater challenges make the game that much more enjoyable. Playing the game in scenarios where there is broad daylight, which you have to do in much of the game, makes for an interesting challenge as well, especially for those who are familiar with the Splinter Cell series and are more comfortable slinking around in the dark like a cowardly harbinger of death.
Looking at performance with Double Agent, our tests clearly show that ATI cards get better performance compared to their direct-price competition from NVIDIA. There are a lot of potential reasons as to why this is the case, but we suspect it has something to do with a rush from the publisher to get the PC version of this Xbox 360 game out the door. We saw similar issues with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which favored ATI hardware more than NVIDIA at the time of its release. Some NVIDIA cards run Double Agent well, but because of the fact that ATI did better over all at running the game than NVIDIA, an ATI part would be the wiser choice if you were looking for a card solely to run this game. Also, as we said earlier, Double Agent seems to run much more stably with ATI's hardware (without bugs, crashes, etc.) as opposed to NVIDIA's.
The fact that the game runs better on ATI hardware than NVIDIA's parts could come from a variety of factors - drivers, the programmers, and/or the specific types of shaders/effects used in the game. We can speculate (and hope) that as we saw with Oblivion, patches and driver updates will possibly fix the bugs and close the gap in performance between ATI and NVIDIA with this game. Even so, the fact that Splinter Cell: Double Agent does not currently support the NVIDIA 8800 series is unacceptable. Also, the problems with SLI and CrossFire are unfortunate, and it would have been nice if support had been provided for multi-GPU solutions. It may be possible that some of the effects used just aren't going to benefit from multi-GPU configurations, but whether or not Ubisoft puts any time in to fixing this, ATI and NVIDIA will almost certainly be looking for a solution.
Overall the game feels rushed, not in the storyline or gameplay necessarily, but in basic things like the interface and overall game stability. There are a lot of hardware incompatibilities which will leave some people, especially 8800 owners, with no current means to play the game after paying up their hard-earned money to buy it. It might be more understandable if the problems were with older-generation cards that were phased out, but on the 8800 - NVIDIA's flagship solution for highest performance - it's just not right.
We aren't sure why this latest addition to the Splinter Cell series was released with so many problems. Even though we've seen similar issues with newly-released games in the past, Double Agent happens to have more problems than usual for a game of this type. At any rate, we hope there will be some patches released soon that will fix these major issues. They should have been addressed before Double Agent's release, but the holiday season can cause some unfortunate effects on things like product launches. In the mean time, hopefully you have a better idea of how GPU performance stacks up in something other than a FPS for a change.
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mpc7488 - Friday, December 8, 2006 - link
Neverwinter Nights 2 would be my vote. From the reviews I've read and my experience, it's even more difficult to run than Oblivion (though it's not clear why, the graphics are not that great in most instances, though the lighting effects are phenominal).Centurin - Friday, December 8, 2006 - link
Neverwinter Nights 2 has framerate problems because of the engine. I wouldn't really use it to benchmark future games. I still feel that Oblivion is the best benchmarks for graphics at this point.DukeN - Friday, December 8, 2006 - link
Where are the 8800 series benchmarks?Josh Venning - Friday, December 8, 2006 - link
As we mentioned in the article, the 8800 cards weren't rendering the game properly. The graphical errors with Double Agent on the 8800 GTS and GTX made the game basically impossible to play. That's why we didn't include numbers for these cards. Hopefully when a patch or driver update fixes this issue we can see how the game performs on the 8800 in the future.Jodiuh - Friday, December 8, 2006 - link
97.44 on NV's site now...Splinter Cell: Double Agent Single Player has geometry corruption.
Jodiuh - Friday, December 8, 2006 - link
^^ That's under issue resolved.PrinceGaz - Friday, December 8, 2006 - link
The GeForce 6 series cards support SM3.0 so could you please add results for some representative cards of that generation. I would suggest a 6800GT (which usually performs in between a 7600GS and 7600GT so would probably belong in the 'mid-range' category) and a 6600GT (which I guess is somewhere around the 7300GT level or slightly higher and would therefore be considered 'low-end').I know the GF6 cards are getting on a bit now but there are a lot of people still using them as they are still capable of running most games quite well (especially the 6800s), and including them makes sense as owners of them are probably the most likely to be considering an upgrade which is what an article like this is presumably intended for.
imaheadcase - Friday, December 8, 2006 - link
From the performance I'm assuming it looks better when playing, because that looks like a console game graphics. heheshabby - Friday, December 8, 2006 - link
The only thing this article is missing is different cpu's, but let me fill that void. With a p4 @ 3.2 ghz + x1900xtx i get around 10-20fps avg. Luckily my e6400 just arrive and i will finally get some decent fps now since the p4 seems like a huge bottleneck.yyrkoon - Friday, December 8, 2006 - link
Forcing paying customers to BETA test games, seems to be becoming a habit among developers, and is simply wrong. Anyone remember the BC 3000 A.D. days and what happened to Derrik Smart ? Anyhow, hoping that Bethesda made Oblivion into a game that would renew my days of playing Daggerfall, I purchased the game, and even stuck up for the developers when others criticized the bugs of the game. Days turned into weeks, then weeks into months, additional content was released (pay ware I might add), all before Bethesda finally released its beta patch. It soon dawned on me, that Bethesda no longer enjoyed creating games, or cared about making their customers happy, but only cared about making money, and that I couldn't help feeling ripped off.I do realize that game developers need to make money like anyone else, but they also need to realize that "anyone else" that works very hard for their money, when they do sell something, they need to provide a solid, working product. Could you imagine Ford, or another car manufacturer selling cars, as new, only to let the customer know AFTER they made the purchase, that some items still needed to be worked on, and that some assembly may be required ? We all know this wouldn't float for one second. After all, its not our fault the developer couldn't release a product on time, or needs money NOW to continue their product. Also, I find it rather strange, that a game recently released does not support new hardware, when games that have been out much longer do. Or did they ?
Companies such as this will find it very hard to get any of my money in the future, and I can only hope that other people will follow, and that perhaps someday we'll have game companies that actually release games as advertised once again. It's hard enough that we gamers have to live with games that are no longer as dynamic as they once were, and have to pay $50usd for game content that lasts about 5-8 hours, before you start reliving the game over, and over, until it finally ends.