VGA performance: Mass effect | Fallout 3 (DX9)

Gaming: Mass Effect

Controversial, and definitely one of the bigger titles of 2008. Mass Effect from BioWare. Originally released for the XBOX 360 it unveiled a vast, beautiful galaxy populated by diverse, fascinating alien races. Players stepped onto this stage as Commander Shepard, a hero at the vanguard of humanity's ascension in the arena of galactic politics, and thus began an epic story bolstered by engaging characters and rich, branching dialogue.

Set 200 years in the future in an epic universe, Mass Effect places gamers in a vast galactic community in danger of being conquered by a legendary agent gone rogue. A spectacular new vision from legendary developers BioWare, Mass Effect challenges players to lead a squad of freedom fighters as they struggle against threatening armies to restore peace in the land.

I started playing this game last year when released, it's rare for me .. but I spend all my free time on it and finished the game. What a great title Mass Effect is. The game however does not support AA. Despite that, it does show really awesome graphics, complex facial animations and applies a noise filter just to get you that really nice cinematic feeling. Overall one of the better games I've played in 2008. Definitely pick it up.

Mass Effect Settings:

• Noise Filter on
• Textures: Extreme high
• Filter: Anisotropic
• Everything maxed out

Again we spot astonishing performance. 2560x1600 manages to average out at ~170-180 frames per second, amazing.

Fallout 3

You know, its been a decade since the last Fallout release, and a lot has happened since then. Fallout 3 takes place roughly two-hundred years after a nuclear war devastated the planet. While the series originally started in Southern California, this time around youll find yourself in a post-apocalyptic Washington D.C., better known as the Capital Wasteland. You are a resident of Vault 101, one of a series of fallout vaults built to protect its inhabitants from the harsh conditions in the wasteland. As the story goes, in Vault 101, nobody enters - and nobody leaves. Raised as a child in the vault, the game begins with you as a young lad learning to take your first steps and continues as you grow older (this portion of the game is used as both a training mission and to build an affinity with your character). It isnt until you wake up one day to find the vault in chaos - your father has somehow left and its up to you to follow him into the wasteland - where the story really begins.

Fallout 3 is an immersive, graphically stunning title with that awesome movie feel. Easily one of the best games of 2008, a must buy Gurus... a must buy.

Image quality

• 8x AA
• HDR enabled
• Detail level: Ultra

In case you didn't notice ...  yes up to 2560x1600 we stumble into a CPU limitation. FYI: we use a Core i7 965 processor at 3.7 GHz. The system has so much GPU rendering power that the CPU is completely maxed out and can't provide data towards the graphics card driver fast enough. That's the flat line you are seeing there.

This is at Ultra image quality settings with 8xAA enabled. As you can see, the game scales really well with multiple GPUs.

For those interested in testing the game with FRAPs and learning how to disable the framerate cap:

force the cap off by setting iPresentInterval=0 in both Fallout.ini and FalloutPrefs.ini located in User\Documents\My Games\Fallout 3\.