ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe - Page 13

Thief 3

Instead of Deus Ex, from now on we'll be testing our cards using Thief 3. It is based on the same engine but it's much less GPU intensive and playable on more VGA cards than Deus.

The game makes severe use of Pixel Shader 1.1 instructions, the bloom effect and stencil shadows to achieve a wonderful result on your screen.

In the game, you play the part of Master Thief Garrett who is back to rule out any evil forces using his unique stealth abilities. Deadly Shadows shows what stealth gameplay is all about. This game really gives you the feel of sneaking around and holding your breath when stuck in a sticky situation.

Since there is no official benchmark for the game, we'll do our tests using a GPU intensive scene from the tutorial-level which we believe represents the average fps you'll get when playing the game.

In a game such as Thief 3 with a demanding graphics engine, only high end cards can make it through the consecutive resolution increments without dropping their performance to awful levels. Unfortunately, although the combined force of two GPUs makes a lot of difference, it could not compare with the 6800Ultra in any case. .

Even from the start, enabling AA and AF is a disaster for the card. Only 10 fps were reported at 1600x1200. It should be noted though that this is the most demanding game test in this review.