Black and White 2 v.1.2 Performance Update
by Josh Venning on April 5, 2006 3:01 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
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.
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.
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mino - Saturday, April 8, 2006 - link
Hi Josh,could you consider a review of the (forever postponed) S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game ???
I think it is as of now the most visully appealing, realistic and demandong game. IMHO this game is the way to test GPU's performance on future titles.
I'm sure the moment You check it You will understand.
Josh Venning - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - link
We will definitely consider reviewing this game after it's released, whenever that may be.Kremy - Thursday, April 6, 2006 - link
Just wanted to add another vote for some Oblivion testing, and ALSO an inclusion of ATI's x800 and x850 series vid cards. For the record, I'm playing Oblivion on an x850xt running at 540/580 (PE speeeds), and it's running fine on high settings, 1024x768, no AA, full distance. Great game...AdamK47 3DS - Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - link
Why is there an article about it now when this patch has been out for so long?bupkus - Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - link
Maybe to be fair to ATI.AdamK47 3DS - Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - link
I suppose there could have been some pressure from Ati to post this article in order to vindicate themselves. Anandtech did like to use the previous version of B&W2 for performance testing. People were probably quick to blame Ati for the poor performance. I doubt this whole article would have ever been written had there not been some sort of outside influence.JarredWalton - Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - link
Actually, AFAIK, Josh just wanted to write about this subject. He's also the one that has done some of the regression testing (i.e use old drivers). It's all in the search for knowledge. As far as the patch, I'm *sure* that ATI helped Lionhead make some optimizations. Okay, that's a guess, but I would be amazed if they didn't. So, file this one under the heading of, "why is it that we need to make specific optimizations to games and drivers?"Oblivion is even worse right now. SLI you have to make a custom profile and manually enable AFR2 rendering for best performance (apparently). For ATI CF support, you actually have to rename the executable. So much for multi-GPU support out of box experience! Not that SLI/CF aren't faster, but they are frequently a hassle to deal with.
spinportal - Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - link
Why doesn't any site test a 7900 GTX clocked down to a 7900 GT part for core/mem and see its performance? I have a feeling there could be a US$400 market for such a tweaked GT w/ 512MB card in between a GT (256MB) & GTX (512MB). Where o'where?Araemo - Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - link
"Unfortunately, one of the problems with this game has been that it tends to favor NVIDIA graphics cards over ATI cards, despite the ATI splash screen at the game's startup."Well, humorously enough, there has been at least one "Nvidia: The way it's meant to be played" game that ran better on my 9700 Pro than my friends' 5xxxx and 4xxxx series nvidia cards. :) Most dev houses are against making their game specifically more playable on one type of hardware than another, even with branding payments. ATI and nVidia are pretty even as far as gamer-level market share goes, so they're not going to fubar half their audience on purpose, and some games just run better on one architecture than another.. Nothing really suprising except that ATI and nVidia think that is worth spending their money on. :)
Warder45 - Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - link
Let's see some Elder Scrolls Oblivion testing.