Performance on ultra-enthusiast cards
Analysis
Let's digest these numbers for a moment. A £375 GeForce GTX 680 is only able to manage 40.2fps at 1,920x1,080. This average frame-rate practically halves as we move to single-screen 2,560x1,600, making the game unplayable. Put it on three screens and the average frame-rate is just plain poor.
A Radeon HD 7970 GHz card fares no better no 1,920x1,080, but its larger framebuffer and more-potent architecture enable it to pull a 10 per cent lead over the GTX 680 at 2,560x1,600 and 5,760x1,080 resolutions. That said, the game is just as unplayable at higher resolutions.
The fastest single-GPU card on the planet is between 30-40 per cent quicker than the other two single-GPU cards. Performance is nice and lush at the 1080p resolution and just about playable at 2,560x1,600. Increase the visual fidelity to very high quality settings and the 1080p score drops from 55.7fps to 43fps and the 1,600p score from 30fps to 23.5fps. We observed a circa-25 per cent drop in performance on other cards, as well.
Powerful dual-GPU cards are required to tame the graphics engine. A couple of HD 7970s play very nicely at the two lower resolutions though it requires the full might of two TITANs in SLI to make the game smooth on three screens. Raise the three-screen quality to very high and even SLI'd TITANs can barely achieve 30fps.
Flipping it around, based on our quick FRAPS section near the start of the game, users with Radeon HD 7800-series and GeForce GTX 660 cards will need to knock the settings down some, even at 1080p.
Yet providing average frame-rates doesn't tell the full story. We've grouped the single-GPU TITAN, GTX 680 and Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition into one set of per-second graphs and the GTX TITAN SLI, twin HD 7970s and GeForce GTX 690 into another set. All will be clear on the next page.
