VGA performance: Anno 1404 - Dawn of Discovery (DX10)
Anno 1404 - Dawn of Discovery
So ever since the first Anno series was launched many years ago, I have been playing this excellent RTS. 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 pertaining really nice image quality.
For our test with Anno 1404 we enable everything and we enable:
- highest possible setting
- DirectX 10 mode
- 4x Anti-Aliasing enabled
- 16x AF
As a result the game is playable up-to 2560x1600 (!) Again perfect 2-way SLI scaling, and 3-way SLI is cooping with the CPU bottleneck ( 3.75 GHz clocked Core i7 965) severely. This does make sense though, we test in a level with a big (and tightly run) city, and being an RTS, that requires a lot of CPU horsepower all by itself already.
I just love this title, anyone built a Cathedral already ? :)
