Splinter Cell: Double Agent: A Performance Analysis
by Josh Venning on December 8, 2006 2:10 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
High-End Cards
Certain things jumped out as soon as we started benchmarking Splinter Cell: Double Agent. In particular, aside from running with less bugs and glitches, the game performed much better on ATI hardware than NVIDIA hardware in all of our tests. Almost all of our ATI cards were able to run the game with fairly playable frame rates at the highest resolution, with the highest quality settings. As a testing side note, we also noticed that ATI saw frame rates that were more consistent than NVIDIA's between multiple runs of the same benchmark and settings. For all the NVIDIA cards, when running a benchmark twice, there was an improvement in performance of 1-2 fps, while with ATI the difference was only a fraction of an fps.
For the performance tests, we divided the test resolutions into three sections for NVIDIA and ATI based on the three levels of hardware: low-end, mid-range, and high end performance. For the lower-end cards, we tested at 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768 resolutions. For mid-range cards, we tested at 800x600, 1024x768, and 1280x1024 resolutions. On high end cards, we tested at the three highest resolutions: 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1200. In this way we were able to see some performance overlaps between tests with each of the different types of cards.
Here we see right away the difference in performance between ATI and NVIDIA hardware with Double Agent. ATI's X1950 XTX gets the highest performance of the group, and could have handled much higher resolutions had they been available. The X1950 XTX even sees a little bit of CPU limitation between these resolutions, because of its high level of performance with this game. NVIDIA's 7900 GTX gets similar performance to the X1900 XT 256, and the 7950 GT similar to the X1950 Pro.
For the more stressful cruise ship benchmark, we can see how much performance impact a highly detailed area can have in this game. The cruise ship level is one of the more graphically intensive levels of the game, and this is one of the places where your hardware will really make a difference in gameplay. The 7900 GS manages to run this benchmark smoothly at 1280x1024, but if you want to play the game at 1600x1200 you will have more flexibility with ATI hardware. The performance difference, coupled with the smoother operation and fewer crashes, make ATI hardware a much better solution for running this game than NVIDIA.
Certain things jumped out as soon as we started benchmarking Splinter Cell: Double Agent. In particular, aside from running with less bugs and glitches, the game performed much better on ATI hardware than NVIDIA hardware in all of our tests. Almost all of our ATI cards were able to run the game with fairly playable frame rates at the highest resolution, with the highest quality settings. As a testing side note, we also noticed that ATI saw frame rates that were more consistent than NVIDIA's between multiple runs of the same benchmark and settings. For all the NVIDIA cards, when running a benchmark twice, there was an improvement in performance of 1-2 fps, while with ATI the difference was only a fraction of an fps.
For the performance tests, we divided the test resolutions into three sections for NVIDIA and ATI based on the three levels of hardware: low-end, mid-range, and high end performance. For the lower-end cards, we tested at 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768 resolutions. For mid-range cards, we tested at 800x600, 1024x768, and 1280x1024 resolutions. On high end cards, we tested at the three highest resolutions: 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1200. In this way we were able to see some performance overlaps between tests with each of the different types of cards.
Here we see right away the difference in performance between ATI and NVIDIA hardware with Double Agent. ATI's X1950 XTX gets the highest performance of the group, and could have handled much higher resolutions had they been available. The X1950 XTX even sees a little bit of CPU limitation between these resolutions, because of its high level of performance with this game. NVIDIA's 7900 GTX gets similar performance to the X1900 XT 256, and the 7950 GT similar to the X1950 Pro.
For the more stressful cruise ship benchmark, we can see how much performance impact a highly detailed area can have in this game. The cruise ship level is one of the more graphically intensive levels of the game, and this is one of the places where your hardware will really make a difference in gameplay. The 7900 GS manages to run this benchmark smoothly at 1280x1024, but if you want to play the game at 1600x1200 you will have more flexibility with ATI hardware. The performance difference, coupled with the smoother operation and fewer crashes, make ATI hardware a much better solution for running this game than NVIDIA.
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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...