Splinter Cell: Double Agent: A Performance Analysis
by Josh Venning on December 8, 2006 2:10 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Setting Expectations
Luckily, with Double Agent, we don't have a game like Oblivion on our hands that stresses current generation GPUs to their limit and beyond. However, the game is still fairly taxing on your graphics card with all the quality settings turned up, particularly at high resolutions. We found that ATI hardware ran the game a little better and without as many problems as NVIDIA gear, and this isn't a big surprise, considering the game was originally made for the Xbox 360. In fact, the game is apparently a direct transfer of software from the Xbox360 platform to the PC, which might account for a lot of the bugs and the clunky game interface.
It's no secret that Splinter Cell: Double Agent has some problems running, especially on NVIDIA hardware. We found that on our test system, the game would crash to the desktop often when just changing simple settings like HDR and antialiasing. We discovered that by changing these settings while the game resolution was set to 640x480 we were able to avoid the constant crashing, but the game still had to be restarted for some settings to take effect. Constantly restarting the game gets very tiresome because of the long intro/splash screen which cannot be bypassed. This coupled with the long load times (and unload times when quitting a game back to the main menu) is a frustrating aspect of the game menu. We also found that sometimes certain quality settings wouldn't take effect even after restarting the game and/or computer, but then would suddenly take effect when something like the game resolution was changed.
The game was much more stable on ATI hardware, with hardly any of the crashing we saw with the NVIDIA cards. We still had to restart the game and sometimes switch resolutions to get certain quality settings to change, though. Also, CrossFire setups seem to cause a lot of crashing, and on the off chance that the game would work for us with CrossFire enabled it did not improve performance over a single GPU. In fact, both SLI and CrossFire don't seem to be supported by the game at present, and they actually resulted in worse performance than a single card. The game also won't play on our X800 card, and we suspect there will be limited or no support for SM2.0 cards in this game.
Splinter Cell: Double Agent is based on Unreal Engine 2, but graphically it looks better than original UE2 games because Ubisoft added DX9 shaders to handle effects like dynamic shadows, HDR, and a few other items. In this way Ubisoft gives the game a much more current and exciting look despite the older engine. However, even though the graphics look good, they aren't nearly as advanced graphically as what we will see from titles based around Unreal Engine 3.
Luckily, with Double Agent, we don't have a game like Oblivion on our hands that stresses current generation GPUs to their limit and beyond. However, the game is still fairly taxing on your graphics card with all the quality settings turned up, particularly at high resolutions. We found that ATI hardware ran the game a little better and without as many problems as NVIDIA gear, and this isn't a big surprise, considering the game was originally made for the Xbox 360. In fact, the game is apparently a direct transfer of software from the Xbox360 platform to the PC, which might account for a lot of the bugs and the clunky game interface.
It's no secret that Splinter Cell: Double Agent has some problems running, especially on NVIDIA hardware. We found that on our test system, the game would crash to the desktop often when just changing simple settings like HDR and antialiasing. We discovered that by changing these settings while the game resolution was set to 640x480 we were able to avoid the constant crashing, but the game still had to be restarted for some settings to take effect. Constantly restarting the game gets very tiresome because of the long intro/splash screen which cannot be bypassed. This coupled with the long load times (and unload times when quitting a game back to the main menu) is a frustrating aspect of the game menu. We also found that sometimes certain quality settings wouldn't take effect even after restarting the game and/or computer, but then would suddenly take effect when something like the game resolution was changed.
The game was much more stable on ATI hardware, with hardly any of the crashing we saw with the NVIDIA cards. We still had to restart the game and sometimes switch resolutions to get certain quality settings to change, though. Also, CrossFire setups seem to cause a lot of crashing, and on the off chance that the game would work for us with CrossFire enabled it did not improve performance over a single GPU. In fact, both SLI and CrossFire don't seem to be supported by the game at present, and they actually resulted in worse performance than a single card. The game also won't play on our X800 card, and we suspect there will be limited or no support for SM2.0 cards in this game.
Splinter Cell: Double Agent is based on Unreal Engine 2, but graphically it looks better than original UE2 games because Ubisoft added DX9 shaders to handle effects like dynamic shadows, HDR, and a few other items. In this way Ubisoft gives the game a much more current and exciting look despite the older engine. However, even though the graphics look good, they aren't nearly as advanced graphically as what we will see from titles based around Unreal Engine 3.
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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...