MSI FX5950 Ultra - Page 15

Tomb Raider: Angel of darkness

A series of grisly murders brings Lara into conflict with a sinister Alchemist from the past, and a secret alliance of powerful individuals shrouded in mystery. Accused of the murder of her one time mentor, Werner Von Croy, Lara becomes a fugitive on the run. Pursued by the police, she follows the Alchemist into a dark world of blood, betrayal and vengeance where it is up to her to defeat this unholy alliance, and stop them from unleashing their incredible powers on the world.

Angel of Darkness employs a brand new engine with Lara now made up of over 5,000 polygons as opposed to just 500 in previous Tomb Raider games. The range of special effects create a batch of cool visuals.

From the many types of water (mercurial liquid forms, good surface texturing, and realistic pools of water) to fire (heat blurs and colorful, fiery pits), to the game's many light effects (lots of shadowing, multiple light sources and effective reflections), Core mixes more realistic settings with special effects to create a well-rounded whole. It is worth mentioning though that Tomb Raider: AOD, uses pixel shader 2.0 technology to a higher extent than Halo does.

- Tomb Raider:AOD Benchmark

I recorded a time-demo on the Paris stage. The particular scene where the time-demo was recorded, is full with complicated fire effects. This benchmark stresses a lot the cards pixel shading processes and I believe it is the most stressful pixel shader 2.0 game benchmark.

We grabbed the fps from the time-demo twice. Once with the Anti Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering off (Trilinear was used instead), and once more with AA at 4x and Anisotropic Filtering mode enabled from the game's settings console.

The game is only playable under 1024x768 with the FX5950 which shows how badly it processes pixel shader 2.0 effects. Let's see if it can keep that above 25 fps with 4x Anti-Aliasing and 8x Anisotropic Filtering.

Yes it did, barely. 27 fps might not be enough to enjoy playing the game, but then again you can opt out some quality settings like turning off AA and choosing 8x for AF.