Splinter Cell: Double Agent: A Performance Analysis
by Josh Venning on December 8, 2006 2:10 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Midrange Cards
The midrange or mainstream cards we chose to test were the NVIDIA 7600 GT and 7600 GS, as well as ATI's X1650 XT and X1650 Pro. Since some of these cards had trouble running the game at all the resolutions with high quality enabled (especially with the cruise ship benchmark), we tested these cards on both benchmarks with both the highest quality settings enabled, and again with the lower quality graphics settings (high quality soft shadows, high detail shader, and trilinear filtering set to off).
The difference in performance between the X1650 XT and 7600 GT further illustrates the fact that this game runs better on ATI hardware. These two cards are direct competitors in performance and price, and the X1650 XT sees about a 14% increase in performance over the 7600 GT. At around $140 The 7600 GT is a little cheaper than the X1650 XT right now, but we found a Sapphire X1650 XT for about $150 which would be a much better buy if Splinter Cell: Double Agent is your game of choice. The two cards trade blows in other titles, so the final decision will come down to game preference, but we would give the X1650 XT a slight edge overall.
For our medium quality performance tests, we left out the higher end cards from NVIDIA and ATI which obviously didn't need a performance boost at the sacrifice of image quality. Double Agent's graphics suffer with the shadow effects disabled, in some levels more than others, so high-quality settings should be enabled to get the most out of the game if your hardware can handle it. We also found the game looked and played well on some mainstream cards at lower resolutions like 1024x768 with all the effects enabled, so turning down the resolution a little might be a good solution for less powerful hardware. For those that must play the game at higher resolutions, turning off some of the shadow effects as well as trilinear filtering can significantly improve performance.
The performance differences we see for the cruise ship benchmark when the shadow/shader effects are disabled are much more dramatic than with the first benchmark. This is because in the particular test we chose, there are lots of shadows created by the bright sun shining down on the whole front deck of the boat. This is very different from the first benchmark which takes place under the cover of night with night vision enabled. Without the high quality soft shadows and high detail shader enabled, there is a marked difference in how the deck looks as Sam slides down the cable. It just looks like the weather has changed from bright and sunny to overcast suddenly, which doesn't take that much away from the actual gameplay.
The midrange or mainstream cards we chose to test were the NVIDIA 7600 GT and 7600 GS, as well as ATI's X1650 XT and X1650 Pro. Since some of these cards had trouble running the game at all the resolutions with high quality enabled (especially with the cruise ship benchmark), we tested these cards on both benchmarks with both the highest quality settings enabled, and again with the lower quality graphics settings (high quality soft shadows, high detail shader, and trilinear filtering set to off).
The difference in performance between the X1650 XT and 7600 GT further illustrates the fact that this game runs better on ATI hardware. These two cards are direct competitors in performance and price, and the X1650 XT sees about a 14% increase in performance over the 7600 GT. At around $140 The 7600 GT is a little cheaper than the X1650 XT right now, but we found a Sapphire X1650 XT for about $150 which would be a much better buy if Splinter Cell: Double Agent is your game of choice. The two cards trade blows in other titles, so the final decision will come down to game preference, but we would give the X1650 XT a slight edge overall.
For our medium quality performance tests, we left out the higher end cards from NVIDIA and ATI which obviously didn't need a performance boost at the sacrifice of image quality. Double Agent's graphics suffer with the shadow effects disabled, in some levels more than others, so high-quality settings should be enabled to get the most out of the game if your hardware can handle it. We also found the game looked and played well on some mainstream cards at lower resolutions like 1024x768 with all the effects enabled, so turning down the resolution a little might be a good solution for less powerful hardware. For those that must play the game at higher resolutions, turning off some of the shadow effects as well as trilinear filtering can significantly improve performance.
The performance differences we see for the cruise ship benchmark when the shadow/shader effects are disabled are much more dramatic than with the first benchmark. This is because in the particular test we chose, there are lots of shadows created by the bright sun shining down on the whole front deck of the boat. This is very different from the first benchmark which takes place under the cover of night with night vision enabled. Without the high quality soft shadows and high detail shader enabled, there is a marked difference in how the deck looks as Sam slides down the cable. It just looks like the weather has changed from bright and sunny to overcast suddenly, which doesn't take that much away from the actual gameplay.
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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.