DX10: 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 pertaining really nice image quality.

For our test with Anno 1404 we:

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

Massive CPU limitation again, you do need to wonder if 3-way SLI would be a viable alternative at 1920x1200. Even when we increase processor power extensively:

As you can see, once we we move from a 3.8 GHz clocked Core i7 960X processor to the X79 platform with a Core i7 3960X processor clocked at 4600 MHz we see an increase in performance with 3-way SLI. The difference however remains too little to justify a third card. But again, Anno 1404 is also an aging title.