Gaming: Mass Effect | BIA Hell's Highway

Setup your monitor

Make sure before playing games only is setting up your monitors contrast & brightness levels a very important thing to do. I realized recently that a lot of you guys have setup your monitors improperly. How do we know this? Because we receive a couple of email every now and then telling that a reader can't distinguish the benchmark charts (colors) in our reviews. We realized, if that happens, your monitor is not properly setup.

This simple test pattern is evenly spaced from 0 to 255 brightness levels, with no profile embedded. If your monitor is correctly set up, you should be able to distinguish each step, and each step should be roughly visually distinct from its neighbors by the same amount. As well, the dark-end step differences should be about the same as the light-end step differences. Finally, the first step should be completely black.

Gaming: Mass Effect

Controversial, new and definitely one of the bigger titles of the year. 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.

Results: for today we'll take three high-end cards. I didn't place another reference 4870 X2 in there are the results are ~ 100% similar, dead on.

Cards used:

• Radeon HD 4870 1024MB
• Radeon HD 4870 X2 2048MB (PALIT)
• GeForce GTX 280 1024MB

Should you have a need to compare the performance results to other competing cards, please check out our VGA charts.

Mass Effect Settings:

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

Mass Effect is one of the best games I have played this year. I just had to include in our benchmark suite. The game shows 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 titles I've played this year so far. The X2 is extremely fast with it's two GPUs, as it is in most scenarios.

Gaming: Brothers in arms Hell's Highway

Hells 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 which is 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 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.

On of the most impressive details is that the area of Operation Market garden was completely reconstructed by 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 editor 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. Lot's 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.

Since the graphics engine of this game can deal with a lot, we opt the best image quality available in-game.  As you can see the three leading products are real close to each other. Actually too close, as we can clearly see that the second GPU on the X2 is not yet kicking in due to lack of driver support for this title. These results are based on ATI's Catalyst 8.10 driver.