2D Performance – Batman and Dirt 2
Batman: Arkham Asylum (DirectX 9)
One of the best received gaming titles on both console and PC for 2009, Batman: Arkham Asylum is an impressive game both visually and in terms of design.
Batman: Arkham Asylum Test Settings
One interesting note: Batman (Bruce Wayne, personally) doesn’t allow setting AA levels in-game for AMD graphics card but DOES for NVIDIA GPUs. We instead enabled AA in the AMD Catalyst Control Panel where noted. This obviously creates a performance discrepancy but unfortunately this is what gamers today are left with.
It should come as little surprise to us that in Batman: Arkham Asylum NVIDIA’s dual-GTX 480 configuration is the dominant gaming option at 5760×1080 especially with AA in the picture. AMD users are still left with control panel based AA options and at this point it doesn’t appear that either the developer or AMD are going make the effort to get it working. Oh well. The NVIDIA Surround system gets a huge performance edge here as it is able to double up almost on the pair of Radeon HD 5870s. That being said, even with the disadvantage of AA on its shoulders the 5870s are able to pull off very playable frame rates at this resolution.
DiRT 2 (DirectX 11)
DiRT 2 is a great rally and off-road racing game that was released on all the major consoles as well as the PC just this past winter. DiRT 2 was the first major PC title to implement DirectX 11 features and image quality enhancements and thus makes a great choice for one of our first NVIDIA versus AMD DX11 comparisons.
DiRT 2 Test Settings
DiRT 2 is one of those games that AMD has been using to really show off its Eyefinity configurations so it just made sense to throw it in here as well. With a single Radeon HD 5870 the system struggled to play at 5760×1080 with AA set to 4x and the CrossFire configurations didn’t really add much to the overall performance. NVIDIA’s GTX 480s were able to beat out the best tested AMD option by about 30%.
