The Games of Christmas '08: GPU Performance Part 1

Dead Space: GPU Performance

To benchmark Dead Space, we used a timed 10 minute gameplay session around in Chapter 2: Intensive Care on Hard Difficulty in which we battle a few necromorphs and enter a zero-G environment. Seriously, what good is a benchmark without action sequences? “Walkthroughs” are unacceptable around here… Once again FRAPS was used.

1680 X 1050



2560 X 1600


Just like in CoD: WaW, the performance of nearly every single ATI card leaves much to be desired. I am not sure if this is a driver limitation or what but when a 9800 GTX+ beats out a HD 4870 1GB again and again, you know something isn’t quite right in the ATI driver department. Good on them for making good use of the HD 4870 X2 though.

Something else that should be mentioned is the fact that this is one of the few games we will see here today in which is the GTX 280 is able to put itself head and shoulders above the EVGA GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked card. However, we are able to see that the standard GTX 260 is still a pretty good bang for your buck.