As a side note, SimHQ would like to briefly discuss the titles used in this Preview. Multiple readers recently expressed concern in the Article Feedback Forum that SimHQ was remiss for not including a traditional simulation line-up in the Radeon HD 4850 Performance Preview. The Preview was done this way for several reasons listed below.
Simulations have traditionally been known as "CPU-bound" in their performance characteristics, which simply means their frame rate is tied to the processing capabilities of the test system’s CPU. Given an adequate video card, the more stout the CPU, the better the sim would perform. A fast CPU would see a title scale its frame rates much better.
Conversly, if a users current video card is adequate for running a sim, installing a significantly faster graphics card could result in little fps increase, especially when scaled over multiple resolutions. Yes, there would be a benefit of the new graphic effects from the latest technology, but the frame rates may stay relatively the same. So for example, an older title like EAW will not provide significantly increased frame rates on a newer card versus an older card.
This presents a challenge to GPU hardware testing, especially since the simulations market is currently in a gap waiting for 5-6 significant new titles to arrive that hopefully will "push" GPU technology. SimHQ has used 1946, GTR2 and other traditional sim titles until they have become dated in showing newer GPU performance.
SimHQ plans on detailing to our readers how and why we test and showing the performance of multiple sims as to how the GPU and CPU affect titles in an upcoming article. We hope that will further explain the reasoning behind our methods. SimHQ is looking at some additional sim testing in previews and reviews that should prove valuable to readers in future articles. |
