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:

• enabled everything 
• enabled the highest possible image quality settings
• enabled DirectX 10 mode
• enabled 4x Anti-Aliasing
• Used campaign build mode and have built three islands with extensively sized cities

As you can see, we stumbled into anomalies with Anno 1404. We already noticed this with the single GPU review of the GTX 580. Despite the anomaly, rest assured you'll play the game with butter-smooth framerates regardless.