Jimmybar

I have a two and a half year old computer: Pentium 4 2.8 GHz, 1GB DDR 400, ATI Radeon 9800 PRO. At the time of purchase I believed it was good enough for any games on the market. Rumours about SB Pro PE said that it is not extremely demanding for graphics performance. The graphics card is now ranked into the highest SXGA+ class in the "Graphics card recommendations for steelbeasts Professional". I was surprised when I got low frame rates ( 13 ... 25 FPS ) in one MP game "300 Spartans". In plain grass test scenario with few vehicles the frame rates are constantly more than enough, 40 - 60 FPS, but any woods and ground cover decrease frame rates badly. I can play with lowest settings, but it seems that the nice looking maps do not come free. Here is one test I made: I run scenario demo/refueling-forest.sce, I look at the default F8 view of the default tank down the road so that barely no sky is visible and there is some woods and some road in the screen. I do not scan or otherwise move the view while measuring the frame rate. Resolution is 1024 * 768 Test case 1: Highest graphics card settings in ATI Direct3D settings Anti Aliasing max 6x Anisotropic filtering max 16x Performance vs qualityquality texture preferences max mipmap max Detail high, medium, low, does not matter so much in this case. Result: F8 view 20 FPS F8 view zoomed 9 FPS !, ( not good enough ) Test case 2: Lowest graphics card settings in Direct3D Anti Aliasing min 2x Anisotropic filtering min 2x Performance vs quality performance texture preferences min mipmap min Results: Detail low F8 view 27 FPS F8 view zoomed 28 FPS Detail medium F8 view 23 FPS F8 view zoomed 22 FPS Detail high F8 view 20 FPS F8 view zoomed 22 FPS