VGA performance: Left 4 Dead (DX9)

Left 4 Dead

A new and highly virulent strain of the rabies virus emerges and spreads throughout the human population with frightening speed. The pandemic's victims become grotesquely disfigured widely violent psychopaths, attacking the uninfected on sight. As one of the "lucky" few apparently immune to the sickness, you, unfortunately, are also trapped in a city crawling with thousands of the bloodthirsty Infected. Alone, you're dead. But together with a handful of fellow survivors, you might just fight your way to safety.

For this scene we are in the woods, closing in on a bridge. It is a pleasurable level to play, there's a lot going on. When the level loads up you immediately notice dense vegetation, fog, decent amount of shaders, volumetric smoke, heaps of objects, atmospheric lighting. All in all one of the somewhat heavy on the GPU levels.

With an aging Half Life 2 engine, it makes no sense to forfeit for anything else but the best image quality.

Every possible image quality setting in this game is maxed out. In the above chart you can observe the results taken at 8x AA (multi-sampled) and 16x AF. So even with 8x AA and 16x AF we can enjoy an extremely playable experience up to 1920x1200 with the very best eye-candy enabled.

Again: every possible image quality setting in this game is maxed out combined with 8xMSAA. That is not bad for a card under 100 bucks.