We used the full retail version of Supreme Commander with the version 3223 patch applied. Supreme Commander is developed by Chris Taylor, the creator of the Total Annihilation series, and his development team, Gas Powered Games. Together, Taylor and his team have created what is widely regarded as the spiritual successor to one of the greatest RTS games of all time.
SupCom is a hugely tactical and strategic monster on a massive scale -- hundreds of units can appear on screen at once. It's a massive departure from anything else we've recently seen in the genre. It's one of (if not) the first RTS to allow the player to scroll out to view the scale of battle in its entirety.
We used the game's in-built performance test during our testing, as this provides over seven minutes of variable gameplay -- both zoomed in and out -- that should represent typical scenarios that a user is likely to encounter whilst playing the game. Due to the massive scale of the game, it's incredibly hard to accurately quantify performance in any other way. All in-game settings were set to medium.
Supreme Commander
1280x1024, 4xAA 16xAF, Medium Quality
Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB
BFGTech GeForce 8600 GTS OC2 256MB SLI
BFGTech GeForce 8600 GTS OC2 256MB
ATI Radeon X1950 XT 256MB
Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB
XFX GeForce 8600 GT 620M XXX 256MB
ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB
Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS 256MB
Zotac GeForce 8600 GT ZONE Edition 256MB
Asus EN8600GT 256MB
HIS Radeon HD 2600 XT IceQ Turbo 256MB GDDR3
ATI Radeon X1650 XT 256MB
Sapphire Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB GDDR4
Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT 256MB
45.6
8.0
38.2
4.0
33.9
7.0
33.2
7.0
31.5
7.0
27.9
7.0
27.9
6.0
25.1
5.0
25.0
7.0
24.6
7.0
20.7
6.0
20.4
6.0
20.3
5.0
19.3
4.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
Frames Per Second
Average
Minimum
Supreme Commander
1680x1050, 2xAA 16xAF, Medium Quality
Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB
BFGTech GeForce 8600 GTS OC2 256MB SLI
ATI Radeon X1950 XT 256MB
BFGTech GeForce 8600 GTS OC2 256MB
Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB
ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB
Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS 256MB
XFX GeForce 8600 GT 620M XXX 256MB
Zotac GeForce 8600 GT ZONE Edition 256MB
Asus EN8600GT 256MB
HIS Radeon HD 2600 XT IceQ Turbo 256MB GDDR3
Sapphire Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB GDDR4
Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT 256MB
ATI Radeon X1650 XT 256MB
42.5
8.0
36.1
4.0
30.6
8.0
29.5
7.0
26.9
6.0
26.5
6.0
23.9
5.0
23.5
6.0
20.9
5.0
20.4
6.0
18.8
5.0
18.5
5.0
18.1
4.0
18.0
5.0
0
10
20
30
40
Frames Per Second
Average
Minimum
The tables turn in Supreme Commander, as the GeForce 8600 GT is now faster than the Radeon HD 2600 XT with anti-aliasing enabled. Again, the Zotac is slightly faster than the Asus EN8600 GT we tested a couple of months ago.