S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl Benchmarks - Page 1 of 1
Article By Mike Chambers - September 6, 2008
INTRODUCTION
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, continues to draw interest from our forum members, which is likely due to its unique settings and X-ray graphics engine. Created by Ukrainian developer GSC Game World, the X-ray graphics engine was originally based on Microsoft's DirectX 8.1/9 Applications Programming Interface (API) and the Shader Model 3.0. feature set.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
The Clear Sky prequel has since been released and has an updated graphics engine that supports DirectX 10, which is exclusive to the Windows Vista operating system.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl supports playback of demos and reports average and minimum frame rates. Here are instructions on how to execute a benchmark:
Unzip the files and store them in the following directory - \Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\stalker-shoc\savedgames\
Run S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and load the level that is to be played back - in this case ixbt3
Bring down the console by pressing the tilde key (~) and enter the following command - "demo_play ixbt3"
Observe the demo as it executes and when complete, the results, as shown in the screenshot below, will be available by bringing down the console once again.
The following results are from X-bit lab's ixbt3 demo. This demo places greater demand on the GPU than the demo we previously used and comes closer to matching gameplay performance as well.
The X-ray engine is a high-quality 3D renderer and as such needs an ample amount of CPU and GPU processing power to perform acceptably at 1080 HD resolutions and higher. Note that the highest quality in-game graphics settings were used during the benchmark runs.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Performance - Single GPU
Although S.T.A.L.K.E.R. benefits from the use of antialiasing, expect to receive a significant performance hit with as little as 2x enabled. The game does not support antialiasing when dynamic lighting is enabled, but antialiasing can be forced via the driver control panel.
Note that supersampling transparency antialiasing is also effective in cleaning up aliasing in objects that use transparent textures, like fences, foilage and leaves, but causes an additional loss in performance.
A single GeForce GTX 280 is capable of delivering excellent performance up to the resolution of 1920x1200 in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. At the resolution of 2560x1600, gameplay performance in the introductory level became sluggish as the frame rate generally ranged around 40-45 frames per second. Under this scenario, a multi-GPU solution is highly recommended to achieve optimal gameplay performance.
