Dell, HP, and iBuyPower Back-to-School PC Roundup


Metro 2033 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Metro 2033
DX11 Gaming Performance

 
Metro 2033

Metro 2033 is your basic post-apocalyptic first person shooter game with a few rather unconventional twists. Unlike most FPS titles, there is no health meter to measure your level of ailment, but rather you’re left to deal with life, or lack there-of more akin to the real world with blood spatter on your visor and your heart rate and respiration level as indicators. The game is loosely based on a novel by Russian Author Dmitry Glukhovsky. Metro 2003 boasts some of the best 3D visuals on the PC platform currently including a DX11 rendering mode that makes use of advanced depth of field effects and character model tessellation for increased realism.

The recurring theme in our real-world game tests so far is that HP's Radeon HD 6850 is the preferred graphics card out of the three represented here, and that again plays out as we fire up Metro 2033.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Call of Pripyat
DX11 Gaming Performance

 
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Call of Pripyat is the third game in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series and throws in DX11 to the mix. This benchmark is based on one of the locations found within the latest game. Testing includes four stages and utilizes various weather conditions, as well as different time of day settings. It offers a number of presets and options, including multiple versions of DirectX, resolutions, antialiasing, etc. SunShafts represents the most graphically challenging stage available. We conducted our testing with DX11 enabled, multiple resolutions, and Ultra settings.

HP came close to a clean sweep in our gaming tests, but tripped at the finish line long enough for iBuyPower to pull ahead, at least at lower resolutions. iBuyPower's GeForce GTX 550 Ti didn't scale as well as the Radeon HD 6850 graphics card, and iBuyPower quickly slid back into second place.

Related content