Metro Last Light
In Metro Last Light, only two cards were capable of delivering playable experience, GTX 780 Ti and R9 290X.
We tested all cards on high tessellation setting to check how performance improves on Tonga processor. Unfortunately we notice no difference between the two contestants: R9 285 and R9 280. Both cards offer similar performance.
The 1440p benchmark in Metro LL should only be considered as stress test, it has no practical value to gamers, since no one would use such settings. And the reason behind that is very poor performance of all cards. Since we are not console players, 30 FPS is simply not enough. With high-end cards you can hit average 30 FPS easily, unfortunately mid-range segment will only be enough for 20+.
Tomb Rider
Tomb Raider is one of my favorite game series of all time. Who did not try to lock Winston in the fridge?
The newest Tomb Raider is one of the best looking games I had the pleasure to play. We disabled TressFX for this test and decided to try FXAA. Originally I tried SSAA, but less powerful cards were struggling to deliver sufficient framerates.
GeForce GTX 780 Ti had no trouble taking the lead (with SSAA R9 290X is better). Yet again R9 285 was very close to R9 280, but at least it outperformed GTX 760.
In 1440p test nothing really changed in terms of positions. Cards under 290X were not enough to deliver stable 60 FPS, which is probably an indicator that these graphics settings were set too high for them.
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
Shadow of Mordor benchmark has trouble reporting minimum framerates, for that reason these values are not included. What’s more in-game settings would not allow me to change resolution to 1080p (game is using some weird percentage scaling). Therefore, the end results are just average frame rates at 1440p resolution.
In this test we were using Ultra preset, with high-resolution textures. Developer suggests at least 6GB frame buffer, but as you can see it doesn’t mean it won’t work with 2-4GB cards. In fact, I noticed no stutter during the test, so it must have been just a precaution listing 6GB as a requirement.
The most surprising results came from GTX 770. This card was not able to deliver 40+ FPS. In fact, each 2GB 256-bit card is listed at the back.
| Review Contents | |
|---|---|
| Page 1 | Introduction |
| Page 2 | Overview HIS Radeon R9 285 IceQ X² OC |
| Page 3 | Overview HIS Radeon R9 280 IceQ X² OC |
| Page 4 | Overview HIS Radeon R9 280X iPower IceQ X² Turbo |
| Page 5 | Overview HIS Radeon R9 290X iPower IceQ X² Turbo |
| Page 6 | Overview EVGA GeForce GTX 760 Superclocked ACX |
| Page 7 | Overview Palit GeForce GTX 770 JetStream |
| Page 8 | Overview Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 Ti OC |
| Page 9 | Testing platform and methodology |
| Page 10 | Games Batman: Arkham Origins ● BioShock Infinite ● Total War: Rome 2 ● Alien:Isolation |
| Page 11 | Games Company of Heroes 2 ● GRID Autosport ● Hitman Absolution ● Watch Dogs |
| Page 12 | Games Metro: Last Light ● Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor ● Tomb Raider |
| Page 13 | Games Battlefield 4 ● THIEF ● Sniper Elite III |
| Page 14 | Test 3DMark Fire Strike ● Catzilla ● CompuBench |
| Page 15 | Test ComputeMark ● TessMark ● Luxxmark |
| Page 16 | Test Power consumption ● Temperature |
| Page 17 | Test Overclocking |
| Page 18 | Conclusion |
