Instantaneous Performance and Image Quality

The results of this traditional test session revealed some typical peculiarities. First, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood doesn’t set any unrealistic requirements to the graphics subsystem. And second, the game obviously favors solutions based on Nvidia GeForce GPUs.

Now there is not so much left to check. We need to find out if the performance in this game depends on the CPU frequency and if it does, then how greatly. Besides, as usual we decided to check how the game runs with different image quality settings. To answer these questions we picked two most typical (in our opinion) representatives of the current generation of ATI and Nvidia solutions: Radeon HD 4890 and GeFo0rce GTX 275. Both cards were tested with Core i7-965 Extreme Edition and Core i7-920 processors. During this test session we used 1680x1050 resolution. With the help of Fraps 2.9.8 we recorded instantaneous speed of the cards over the period of 60 seconds for each of the three image quality profiles. Besides, we captured a few screenshots to visually evaluate the difference in image quality between the above mentioned quality profiles.

Here are the obtained results:

We didn’t detect any serious issues no matter what graphics accelerator and CPU were installed in our system. All lines on the diagrams are packed into a tight group and the only evident thing is that GeForce GTX 275 is a little faster than Radeon HD 4890, though the difference is really insignificant. In all cases average performance varied between 86-88 fps and minimal performance didn’t drop below 57 fps. This way, it doesn’t make sense to lower the image quality settings for Radeon HD 4890 or GeForce GTX 275 type of solutions. On the contrary, you can add full-screen antialiasing to the maximum graphics quality settings without losing any of the performance or gaming comfort: the performance is high enough to allow that painlessly.

In Balanced mode average performance increases a little reaching almost 100 fps, although we still don’t see any influence from the CPU. Strange as it might seem, but despite noticeable lowering of the level of detail, the image quality remains barely affected, which most likely happens because of quality post-processing. Although there is no real practical value from it, because even low-power solutions cope OK with Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood in Best Quality mode. There is no reason to sacrifice even a bit of detail for the sake of increasing minimal performance from 60 to 70 fps.

Performance in Best Performance mode corresponds the name of this mode exactly: average, minimal and maximal readings increase dramatically. Peak performance of Radeon HD 4890 and GeForce GTX 275 reach 200 fps and minimum performance doesn’t go below 80 fps. It is also obvious that ATI solution takes revenge in this mode and starts to outperform the competitor. The effect of the system CPU remains minimal, just like in all other cases, and the difference falls within the acceptable measuring error for our test methodology.

From the visual standpoint, the price of the highest performance is truly monstrous. The game loses most of its beauty in Best Performance mode and becomes pretty dull and unimpressive. The primary thing to cause this unpleasant transformation seems to be disabled HDR and post processing effects. I can’t say that the game looks bad, you still can play just fine, but it is definitely not the 2009 graphics quality you would expect. It is hard to say who may need this particular gaming mode, especially since we know that budget Radeon HD 4670 shows acceptable results in Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood in Best Quality mode. The Best Performance mode may be used by the owners of first-generation graphics cards with Shader Model 3.0 support, such as GeForce 6/7 or Radeon X1000 series.

Overall, our test session revealed the following major peculiarities of Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood game. First, the game is not CPU dependent, and second, it hardly makes sense to use any detail profiles other than Best Quality, because Balanced profile doesn’t provide a substantial performance increase, while Best Performance profile makes the game really unattractive. Therefore, the owners of contemporary graphics accelerators such as Radeon HD 4670 or better should use Best Quality mode. If you have a more powerful graphics accelerator, you may try the Balanced mode: it will hardly cause a serious drop of the detail level, but is most likely to get the performance up substantially.