Diamond Viper Radeon HD 3850 512MB Ruby Edition
Bioshock
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BioShock is the "genetically enhanced" first person shooter with RPG elements, that has a feel very reminiscent of System Shock 2 or Deus Ex. It uses a modified Unreal Engine 3.0 with heavy emphasis on enhanced water effects to the extent that Irrational Games actually hired a water programmer and water artist just for this game. Part horror flick, part sci-fi novel, BioShock is an experience that one won't soon forget. We gathered our testing results by measuring frame rates through FRAPS while performing the same set of actions in the opening corridors of Rapture at 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 with all graphical settings turned to High. |
To say that Bioshock runs better on NVIDIA's based cards is an understatement worthy of a closer look into the numbers. The fastest single-GPU Radeon card out there, the HD 3870, puts up a frame rate of 70fps at 1280x1024, which is 20-25 frames slower than either 8800. Even more troubling, the HD 3870's number is slower than the 8800 GTS 512 at 1600x1200. The HD 3850, as expected, doesn't fare any better dropping down to 54fps at the lower resolution, but scaling well at 1600x1200 by only dropping 4 frames to 49.5fps. Again, Diamond's sample maintains a 4-5 frame advantage over Sapphire with its higher core and memory clock speeds.
