Splinter Cell: Double Agent: A Performance Analysis
by Josh Venning on December 8, 2006 2:10 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Low End Cards
Since the second benchmark is so much more demanding graphically than the first, some of the lower-end cards had trouble running at anything above 800x600 with the quality settings on highest. For these cards, we only included tests at two resolutions (640x480 and 800x600) instead of three.
Something interesting here is that the game gets better performance out of even the lowest-end ATI card (X1300 XT) than the 7300 GS and GT cards, and even the 7600 GS trails the X1300 XT. On the very low end, the 7300 GT barely manages to run at 800x600, and with these high quality settings, you might still be able to enjoy the game at this resolution. The 7300 GS isn't so lucky, and it had to be excluded from the second test because it couldn't run the game any higher than 640x480 (and even then performance was poor), making it unfit for enabling the high quality settings regardless of resolution.
Switching to medium quality settings, in the first benchmark the 7300 GS gets a little improvement in performance, but still has trouble running above 800x600. Across the cards though, we do see improvements of up to ~40% in performance with NVIDIA and ATI by just disabling trilinear filtering, high quality soft shadows, and high detail shader in the display menu.
Notice that the 7300 GS, while barely being able to run the cruise ship benchmark at 800x600 with the highest quality settings, gets a respectable framerate at 1024x768 with the shadow effects turned off. The performance differences here are extreme, with the medium quality settings easily causing over a 100% improvement in performance over high quality. Turning off these effects will give more flexibility for running the game at higher resolutions, but we still recommend leaving them on and playing at lower resolutions if your card permits it.
Since the second benchmark is so much more demanding graphically than the first, some of the lower-end cards had trouble running at anything above 800x600 with the quality settings on highest. For these cards, we only included tests at two resolutions (640x480 and 800x600) instead of three.
Something interesting here is that the game gets better performance out of even the lowest-end ATI card (X1300 XT) than the 7300 GS and GT cards, and even the 7600 GS trails the X1300 XT. On the very low end, the 7300 GT barely manages to run at 800x600, and with these high quality settings, you might still be able to enjoy the game at this resolution. The 7300 GS isn't so lucky, and it had to be excluded from the second test because it couldn't run the game any higher than 640x480 (and even then performance was poor), making it unfit for enabling the high quality settings regardless of resolution.
Switching to medium quality settings, in the first benchmark the 7300 GS gets a little improvement in performance, but still has trouble running above 800x600. Across the cards though, we do see improvements of up to ~40% in performance with NVIDIA and ATI by just disabling trilinear filtering, high quality soft shadows, and high detail shader in the display menu.
Notice that the 7300 GS, while barely being able to run the cruise ship benchmark at 800x600 with the highest quality settings, gets a respectable framerate at 1024x768 with the shadow effects turned off. The performance differences here are extreme, with the medium quality settings easily causing over a 100% improvement in performance over high quality. Turning off these effects will give more flexibility for running the game at higher resolutions, but we still recommend leaving them on and playing at lower resolutions if your card permits it.
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sdedward - Friday, December 8, 2006 - link
Have you ever gotten a recall letter in the mail? Thats basically what it says.
shabby - Friday, December 8, 2006 - link
But every car doesnt have a recall. Today it seems like every game gets patched before it even hits stores.Josh Venning - Friday, December 8, 2006 - link
It is very frustrating when a game is released that seems as unfinished as this. The problem is that unlike with other types of products, it's not very easy to pin down who/what exactly is responsible for the problems. Regardless of this, the consumer is the one who ends up suffering, and that's just unacceptable. Thanks for your comments.Jodiuh - Friday, December 8, 2006 - link
Printing now! Thanks for continuing to provide that button. Quite a few sites have removed it and they wind up not getting their arty's read. My notebook gets hot, so I prefer to read these on paper in a comfy chair, couch, bed, etc. :DSomewhat OT, should I be playing the SC series in order? I played through about 25% of the first one and maybe 10 minutes of Chaos Theory. Are they good enough to play through? Should I just play Double Agent?
Le Québécois - Friday, December 8, 2006 - link
Yes I think playing all the SC series in order would be a good thing since every one of them was(still is) a very good game(if you like the stealth/assassin kind of game of course).The older ones should be pretty cheap to buy IF you manage to find them.
Years after years I am pretty amaze that Ubisoft can come with a pretty good game franchise with so little time between the release of each games.
Jodiuh - Friday, December 8, 2006 - link
Buddy's gonna let me borrow the first one. I'll hit it up after HL2.Josh Venning - Friday, December 8, 2006 - link
I personally only played Chaos Theory and Double Agent, but I found them both to be very enjoyable. I think the storyline of Chaos Theory might have been a little better than Double Agent, especially towards the end, but Double Agent had some more interesting gameplay scenarios. I highly recommend playing them both through though, if you can.Jodiuh - Friday, December 8, 2006 - link
Just got through the article...I guess I'll start w/ a SC game that'll run on my card then, lol. This has to be the worst evidence yet of console porting. Normally, it's the interface that sucks. But DA screams port in a hardware way!! And it makes me hate the consoles even more...