CF vs. Hydra: Fallout 3 and LOTRO
Fallout 3Bethesda’s retooling of the Fallout series met with great success, and the original Fallout 3 engine was re-used in Fallout: New Vegas. The area outside of the Vault was used for a manual run-through with FRAPS. Ultra presets with 4X AA and 16X AF were used.
Well, our curiosity of how this particular title scales on high end hardware has been appeased. There is very little scaling going on from the lowest resolution to the highest. It seems that this title is CPU bound with high end video cards, even at the highest image quality settings. It is interesting to see how both Crossfire and Hydra act as a “decelerator” for the title as compared to a single, high end card.
Lord of the Rings Online
Since weaning myself off of the WoW addiction, I needed another MMO to test graphics cards with. LOTRO does feature DX11 optimizations for its engine, and it is arguably one of the better looking MMOs available now. Plus it is Play for Free. That makes Ryan happy. Same with my wife. Only slightly less so.
A manual run-through was performed with FRAPS. All settings were maxed out with 4X AA and 16X AF enabled.
Here we see a very interesting change of events, and one which slightly redeems Hydra. A single, high end card can run LOTRO at good rates even at high resolutions. Hydra provides a nice boost here. Crossfire, on the other hand, now acts as the decelerator. LOTRO is well known for not playing nice with multi-GPU setups, but in this case Hydra actually comes out ahead of the bunch.
As in for up-to-date
As in for up-to-date applications, I am looking for a reliable reader of exe files for some of my gadgets: zune, smart phone. I don`t know for sure how these things work, but as long as we`re talking about serious evolution here, futuristic design, I believe that there is a direct proportional development of easiness to handle technology and revolutionary shapes which I happen to admire a lot.