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S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky -- Graphics Card | VGA performance roundup

GSC Game World and Koch Media have announced S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, the prequel to the irradiated first-person shooter S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, will hit the store shelves mid September 2008, and will be published by the games labels Deep Silver and GSC World Publishing.

When the original S.t.a.l.k.e.r was first released the game was a little shock and awe with a controversial topics and surroundings. S.t.a.l.k.e.r to date has been one of the best ever sold games in the history of PC gaming. it's a robust and solid title with loads of levels and maps. Most of all it gives you a great game play feeling combined with the visual candy that we Guru3D folks like so much.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky is a survival FPS game for PC based on a 'what-if' scenario of the second Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant accident. The game is created as a warning to mankind against mindless play with technologies. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky is the official prequel to the renowned S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game by the Ukraine-based GSC Game World studio. The game is set in 2011 and brings forth the events to have preceded the third campaign of Strelok to the Zone center. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky introduces an alternative look onto the events of the original game and offers the player to try himself out as a mercenary s.t.a.l.k.e.r. in search of his own path in the world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R

With such raving reviews and critiques it came as no surprise that the game would get a sequel, S.t.a.l.k.e.r Clear Sky was just released and it certainly is a worthy follow up.

With S.t.a.l.k.e.r Clear Sky also came an updated graphics engine. What I wanted to do for you guys today is not produce an actual game-review but rather I wanted to show you what you can expect from the game in terms of performance.

Personally we were very impressed by the lighting, which is some of the best we've seen in a game. It's been completely changed. Camp fires cast moving shadows that impact on walls and characters in real time.

Sun rays burst through cracks in wooden roofs. Lightning lights up the night sky as well as dark interiors. It looks terrific and atmospheric, which is what S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is all about really. And don't worry, the game doesn't force you to own a 2,000 EUR costing super computer just to get it out of bed. Clear Sky will support three ranges of hardware, DirectX8 through 10. It will run fine if your computer coped with the original game. We however will focus at the very best image quality settings .. as this is Guru3D.com

• GeForce GTX 280 1024MB BFG OCX
• GeForce GTX 280 1024MB
• Radeon HD 4870 X2 2048MB
• Radeon HD 4870 512MB
• GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB
• Radeon HD 4850 512MB
• GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB
• GeForce 8800 GT 512MB
• Radeon HD 3870 512MB
• GeForce 9600 GT 512MB
• Radeon HD 4670 512MB
• GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB
• GeForce 8600 GT 256MB

We'll do this with mid-range to high-end based graphics cards and we'll test the overall game play in regard to the average FPS. We where very surprised that with affordable graphics cards you can play this game at the highest resolutions with some very decent image quality settings. So that's our goal today. We'll sort out which cards is most suited versus the most common resolutions versus the great image quality settings, yet also look at a new and hefty DirectX 10 Enhanced full Dynamic lighting maximum image quality settings mode.