Tomb Raider: Legend
We tested the performance of Tomb Raider: Legend across a number of video cards using a four minute section of the Peru level. We felt this level was representative of the game as a whole: two in-engine cut scenes; lots of running, jumping and climbing; culminating in two shoot-out sections where Lara takes on over a dozen henchmen in total.
Video Cards:
The Tomb Raider series is unashamedly mainstream so in testing Legend we took the approach that these mainstream gamers aren't experienced in diving into the graphics driver control panel to adjust things like SuperSampled Anti-Aliasing and other advanced tweaks. As a result, we left all the drivers at their default setting of "Auto / Application Controlled" and used the game menu to control the settings.
* driver affected result
As clear victory to ATI then? Well, yes and no. Let's start with the simple task of discussing ATI's performance first. The good news for fans of the Red Army is that the game just works. On our monster high-end test machine, we were able to enable the Next Generation Content and play at reasonable frame rates all the way up to 1920x1200. That fact may not be immediately obvious from the raw numbers shown here, but such is the benefit of our hand-played benchmarking - given these numbers from an automatic timedemo, one would conclude it was "too slow" at these high resolutions.
From personal experience, we can say that the X1900XTX can handle Legend's Next Generation Content from 1280x1024 to 1920x1200 and still be playable. Sure, it's over twice as fast with this setting turned off but given the trade-off between eye candy and raw speed, we feel it is a compromise definitely worth making.
So what's going on with NVIDIA you ask? Quite honestly, a balls-up of substantial proportions. The game is part of NVIDIA's The Way It's Meant To Be Played (TWIMTBP) scheme, which normally means some Green engineers have combed through the graphics code to ensure smooth running on NVIDIA-based graphics cards. The TWIMTBP logo is on the box, and we're subjected to the familiar animated "NVIDIA" whisper every time we load the game. However, the drama goes deeper.
When installing the game, users are presented with a splash screen, which says:
"The Tomb Raider: Legend development team and NVIDIA have worked closely together to provide a state-of-the-art gaming experience on the PC platform. Tomb Raider: Legend has the ability to use next-generation GPU features such as Direct X Shader Model 2 and 3, Hardware Shadow Support, and XHD Rendering at resolutions of up to 2560x1600. Eidos recommends having the latest NVIDIA GeForce graphics processor in your PC to enjoy Tomb Raider: Legend with all features enabled."
Pictured are two screenshots, showing Next Generation Content enabled and disabled. Naturally, the next-gen screenshots looks far better and users are left with the impression that they will have a better gaming experience on NVIDIA hardware. Imagine our surprise when, having enabled Next Generation Content, the game suffers from routine pauses not just during action-packed sequences, but basic running and turning manoeuvres.
No matter what we did, we could not cure the problem. We tried multiple driver revisions. We dropped the resolution to a paltry 800x600. When even the insane grunt of GeForce 7900 GTX SLI failed to improve things, it was clear NVIDIA has driver problems with this game. For any random game, this would be an annoying and you'd wait for a patch or fix. Since Legend is a TWIMTBP game, this performance issue is inexcusable, but given the splash screen extolling the virtues of playing the game on NVIDIA hardware (at up to 2560x1600 no less) this problem is downright reprehensible.
We know they have the speed: with Next Generation Content disabled, the GeForce 7900 GTX is some 25% faster than the Radeon X1900XTX - a delta no doubt a direct result of NVIDIA's Developer Relations team. And once they release a new driver with proper Legend support, we should see the Next-Gen speed where it should be. We will update these results when NVIDIA does so.
For now, NVIDIA owners have the choice of playing the game without the eye candy, enable it and put up with the stutters, or leave their new £30 game on the shelf until NVIDIA releases a fix.
High End System Setup:
AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 (operating at 2600MHz, 13x200MHz), ABIT AN8 32X (NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16); 2 x 1GB Corsair XMS4000 Pro (operating in dual channel at 400MHz with 2.0-3-3-7-1T timings); Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 200GB 7,200RPM SATA II hard disk drive; Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty soundcard; OCZ PowerStream 600W power supply unit; Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2; DirectX 9.0c; NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 platform drivers, version 6.82.Video Cards:
- BFG Tech GeForce 7900 GTX OC 512MB - operating at its default clock speeds of 670/1640MHz using Forceware 84.25, available from nZone;
- Sapphire Radeon X1900XTX 512MB - operating at its default clock speeds of 650/1550MHz using Catalyst 6.3 WHQL;
- BFG Tech GeForce 7800 GT OC 256MB - operating at its default clock speeds of 425/1050MHz using Forceware 84.25, available from nZone.
* driver affected result
As clear victory to ATI then? Well, yes and no. Let's start with the simple task of discussing ATI's performance first. The good news for fans of the Red Army is that the game just works. On our monster high-end test machine, we were able to enable the Next Generation Content and play at reasonable frame rates all the way up to 1920x1200. That fact may not be immediately obvious from the raw numbers shown here, but such is the benefit of our hand-played benchmarking - given these numbers from an automatic timedemo, one would conclude it was "too slow" at these high resolutions.
From personal experience, we can say that the X1900XTX can handle Legend's Next Generation Content from 1280x1024 to 1920x1200 and still be playable. Sure, it's over twice as fast with this setting turned off but given the trade-off between eye candy and raw speed, we feel it is a compromise definitely worth making.
So what's going on with NVIDIA you ask? Quite honestly, a balls-up of substantial proportions. The game is part of NVIDIA's The Way It's Meant To Be Played (TWIMTBP) scheme, which normally means some Green engineers have combed through the graphics code to ensure smooth running on NVIDIA-based graphics cards. The TWIMTBP logo is on the box, and we're subjected to the familiar animated "NVIDIA" whisper every time we load the game. However, the drama goes deeper.
When installing the game, users are presented with a splash screen, which says:
"The Tomb Raider: Legend development team and NVIDIA have worked closely together to provide a state-of-the-art gaming experience on the PC platform. Tomb Raider: Legend has the ability to use next-generation GPU features such as Direct X Shader Model 2 and 3, Hardware Shadow Support, and XHD Rendering at resolutions of up to 2560x1600. Eidos recommends having the latest NVIDIA GeForce graphics processor in your PC to enjoy Tomb Raider: Legend with all features enabled."
Pictured are two screenshots, showing Next Generation Content enabled and disabled. Naturally, the next-gen screenshots looks far better and users are left with the impression that they will have a better gaming experience on NVIDIA hardware. Imagine our surprise when, having enabled Next Generation Content, the game suffers from routine pauses not just during action-packed sequences, but basic running and turning manoeuvres.
No matter what we did, we could not cure the problem. We tried multiple driver revisions. We dropped the resolution to a paltry 800x600. When even the insane grunt of GeForce 7900 GTX SLI failed to improve things, it was clear NVIDIA has driver problems with this game. For any random game, this would be an annoying and you'd wait for a patch or fix. Since Legend is a TWIMTBP game, this performance issue is inexcusable, but given the splash screen extolling the virtues of playing the game on NVIDIA hardware (at up to 2560x1600 no less) this problem is downright reprehensible.
We know they have the speed: with Next Generation Content disabled, the GeForce 7900 GTX is some 25% faster than the Radeon X1900XTX - a delta no doubt a direct result of NVIDIA's Developer Relations team. And once they release a new driver with proper Legend support, we should see the Next-Gen speed where it should be. We will update these results when NVIDIA does so.
For now, NVIDIA owners have the choice of playing the game without the eye candy, enable it and put up with the stutters, or leave their new £30 game on the shelf until NVIDIA releases a fix.
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