VGA performance: BIA Hell's Highway (DX9)

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway

Hell's Highway, another WWII shooter some might say. But in reality the setting of war is really just a vehicle for Gearbox to tell the storyline of a Band of Brothers led by you, Sergeant Matt Baker, as they deal with the madness and consequences of war. The game tells the story of Operation Market Garden in the country where yours truly lives, in the Netherlands (aka Holland). It's about the besieged journey from Eindhoven to Arnhem where tremendous battles were fought.

Exactly that road, Highway 69; the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was later nicknamed: Hell's Highway.

One of the most impressive details is that the area of Operation Market Garden was completely reconstructed using historical documents and images. It's uncanny to see and experience the design of 1944 Holland. Even now in 2008 you can still see striking similarities from our country. Street signs, building structures, clothing and even the clinker bricks on the roads dispense a true authentic mood. This reviewer is Dutch, so what level would be more appropriate than one of the starting levels, in a field in the Netherlands, moving towards a large windmill ahead of us. Lots of geometry is to be found here, and in fact one of the more complex scenes to render for the GPU. Yes, welcome to Holland.

• Texture Quality HIGH
• Shadow Texture Quality HIGH
• Shadow Detail HIGH
• Vsync OFF

Released what... some nine months ago and still on top of my list. Again we have all the eye candy enabled in BIA.

The massive amount of shaders in this title is something this game and yours truly really appreciates. But even at 2560x1600 we still have enough performance to play the game really well, wicked stuff. With so much rendering power we do stumble into a little bit of CPU limitation. A state where the GPUs could go faster, yet the processor is maxed out. But even at 2560x1600 we retrieve a frame rate of over 80 FPS on average, which is sick really.

So the CPU limitation I mentioned you can easily recognize, look at the flat line from 1280x1024 up-to roughly 1920x1200. Whenever you see that, something is limiting the GPUs. In this case the processor. CPU limitation at this level is actually a good thing folks, this means we have plenty of performance to play with and the GPUs have some reserves.