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MikeC
08-31-07, 06:23 PM
I've completed a brief article on how BioShock will be used to guage graphics card performance as it becomes the latest addition to our suite of benchmarks. The first graphics card put to the test was the GeForce 8800 Ultra XXX Edition from XFX.

http://www.nvnews.net/articles/bioshock_gameplay/images/logo.png


Check it out here. (http://www.nvnews.net/articles/bioshock_gameplay/index.shtml)
jAkUp
08-31-07, 07:50 PM
Awesome!
Kerrysucks
08-31-07, 08:02 PM
Excellent work. Bioshock is definitely one well-coded game. I love playing it on my new 65" 1080p TV. It has to be seen to be believed. I'm so glad that I bought this GTX. :D
methimpikehoses
08-31-07, 11:56 PM
Nice breakdown there. Now if we could only get AA in Vista...
OldOfEvil
09-01-07, 07:25 AM
To be honest, I don't normally read nvnews' reviews as I find them brief and simplistic compared to many other review primary sites. I do like the opinionated aspect of the reviews, and have noted a nice improvement of content depth. I especially liked the new minimum, average, max chart you guys are using. This was in no way meant to be negative btw. I hope this, and newer articles will entice me to not simple bypass the main page and head directly into the forums. :)
Sazar
09-01-07, 04:44 PM
Not bad Mike. Not bad at all :cool:
Bman212121
09-01-07, 09:47 PM
To be honest, I don't normally read nvnews' reviews as I find them brief and simplistic compared to many other review primary sites. I do like the opinionated aspect of the reviews, and have noted a nice improvement of content depth. I especially liked the new minimum, average, max chart you guys are using. This was in no way meant to be negative btw. I hope this, and newer articles will entice me to not simple bypass the main page and head directly into the forums. :)

That is one of the things that I like about the [H] reviews, but my only problem is that you can't really compare apples to apples all that well. They show what settings are best suited for each card, but with different setting it is hard to tell how big of a difference there really is between cards.
MikeC
09-02-07, 06:13 AM
Thanks for the comments! Looking forward to using this technique in a number of upcoming games.
grey_1
09-02-07, 05:55 PM
Nice indeed, very thorough imho. :)
OliverRedfox
09-05-07, 05:54 PM
Nice write-up. I'm pretty amazed that it can run smoothly at resolutions that high. I guess that just shows the power of current hardware.

Any chance you could also add a comparison of how the same setup performs using a quad vs dual core with the tweak to use additional threads? I don't know if it would make much difference, but it makes me curious. I haven't seen any benches anywhere yet comparing the two (if any has, please point me to them).


From Bioshock.ini:
HavokNumThreads=2

BioShock benefits significantly from running on a multi-core CPU (See Conclusion section).
This setting controls the number of separate 'threads' on which the Havok physics engine may run.
For example if you have a dual core CPU, this should be set to 2; if you have a quad core CPU try setting this to 4.
However you cannot force the physics engine to run more threads than you have physical cores.
MikeC
09-05-07, 08:40 PM
Nice write-up. I'm pretty amazed that it can run smoothly at resolutions that high. I guess that just shows the power of current hardware.

Any chance you could also add a comparison of how the same setup performs using a quad vs dual core with the tweak to use additional threads? I don't know if it would make much difference, but it makes me curious. I haven't seen any benches anywhere yet comparing the two (if any has, please point me to them).

Thanks. I recall reading a few BioShock threads where users mentioned all four cores were being utilized while playing BioShock. That is an indication of multi-threaded program code, which is a significant breakthrough in game design.

I thought it would take a bit longer before we saw this happen in a commercial game, but Valve has made use of multiple cores in their home-grown development tools. There was an article on the subject over at The TechReport a while back.

This looks like a great reason to invest in a quad-core and I'll look into getting one.

"Honey, where's the debit card" :D
AngelGraves13
09-25-07, 05:30 PM
The article should be updated to see if there are any performance gains with the new 163.71 driver.