VGA performance: Anno 1404 - Dawn of Discovery (DX10)

Anno 1404 - Dawn of Discovery

I have been playing this excellent RTS, ever since the first Anno in the series was launched many years ago. Heck, I had a ton of fun with the original game series like Anno 1602 and 1701. If you're unfamiliar with the Anno series of games, they have all been (1404 is the 3rd sequel) colony-builders that take place in vast archipelagos filled with pirates, natives, treasures, and rival colonies. Typically, players start with a single ship packed with essential goods with which they colonize a single island, and then need to expand their realm.

With the same principles and philosophy yet more trading dynamics in-game, this series changed a little. Next to that the graphics engine had an overhaul allowing a DX10 code path, brushing up and speeding up things here and there while retaining really nice image quality.

For our test with Anno 1404 we:

• enable everything 
• enable the highest possible image quality settings.
• DirectX 10 mode
• 4x Anti-Aliasing enabled.
• Use campaign build mode and have built three islands with extensive sizes cities.

A competitive comparison of the tested game at 19x12 shows the GTS 450 cards in general show very nice performance. At 1600x1200 you'll even climb over 40fps on average with our high image quality settings. That is nice.