World in Conflict - Very High image quality 1280x1024

Imaging spending 600 bucks on a GeForce 8800 Ultra, you select 1280x1024 and see a framerate of merely 37 FPS. Well, imagine this then, things will only get worse from here on. In any case you'll need a GeForce 8800 GTS 640 class graphics or higher adapter to be able to utilize the Very high IQ mode. Mind you that 4xAA and 4xAF is enabled here. Forfeiting AA however resulted in a very minor performance difference.

World in Conflict - Very High image quality 1600x1200

Indeed, a GeForce 8800 GTX is pretty much your minimum required graphics card at 1600x1200. For those that noticed, I ran that 8800 GTS 320 MB test three times to be sure including a re-installation of the driver, but the results matched time after time. I'm pretty confident it's a driver bug though.

Do we even dare try 2560x1600?

World in Conflict - Very High image quality 2560x1600

Of course we do. As you can see, even the GeForce 8800 Ultra at 2560x1600 can't even refresh it's harshly desired pixels fast enough at this resolution. Here's your chance to finally show off your SLI rig though.

A couple of things matter in this game. Better visuals definitely equals a higher frame buffer. If you have a 512 MB graphics card you'll notice a difference in performance versus quality. Also what we noticed was a little CPU limitation. We checked and the game definitely is multi-threading, both cores of our CPU where utilized. So it pays to have a good performing CPU in this game, big-time.

In the screenshot above you can observe roughly 70-80% CPU utilization; both cores are active and working in this game.

Alright guys and gals, this concludes this mini article on World in Conflict. I hope you now at the very least have a brief idea what to expect. This game truly is awesome in many ways, and future graphics cards will only complement this game. The graphics are ahead of the hardware for a change, but luckily you get to play around with IQ options and a bucket full of configurable features so that the game will play on any system.

From that point of view, with future graphics cards things can only get better !

Signing off,

Hilbert