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 ever since. 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 we can enable to the highest possible setting, we render the game in DirectX 10 mode with 4x Anti-Aliasing enabled. As a result the game is playable up-to 2560x1600 (!)

Anno 1404 is one of these titles that benefits massively from the Radeon HD 5870. There however is a a bug in the driver causing black textures, so what you see here is to be considered non-final. Once a final driver is released we'll recheck the performance score. But even if that had an effect on performance, it will still haul massive ass.

Again, a comparison model based on a GPU bound resolution. Full comparison of the tested game at 19x12 or 19x10. You can look at these charts as a performance VGA chart, per game session. VGA performance ranking will become very clear this way.