Date:
Monday , February 22, 2010
Author:
Mark Warner
Editor:
Brent Justice
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BioShock 2 Gameplay Performance and Image Quality

BioShock 2 is here for your damp dark pleasure. BioShock, its predecessor, was a feast for the eyes when it was launched back in 2007, but does the aging engine stand up well to today's video cards and today's expectations? We'll check it out with six of today's best video cards. Now, who's your Big Daddy?

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Highest Playable Settings - 1920x1200

1920x1200 has always been a far more reasonable resolution for your average gamer to shoot for. Not only are the video cards required to drive such a monitor at high settings in modern games more affordable, but the displays themselves are far less expensive. A 30" LCD running at 2560x1600 will still cost you at least $1000, while a 24" LCD running at 1920x1200 can be had easily for under $300.

Not only that, but 1920x1200 is quite close to the 1080p HDTV standard. So gamers with Home Theater PCs and gamers using HDTVs as primary displays on standard PCs can rely on 1920x1200 to give them an accurate impression of how a video card will perform at 1080p. In general, performance should be slightly higher in 1080p than at 1920x1200, due to the 120 fewer scan lines in that standard.

Performance

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At 1920x1200, the framerates produced by the Radeon HD 5850 took off like a rocket. Performance was also truly great on the GTX 275, and was in fact good enough for us to enable 16xQ CSAA. Again, the Radeon HD 5850 was not able to give us AA in this game, so we don’t know what it could have given us. It is probably fair to say that it would have been comparable to the GTX 275.

Unfortunately, it is becoming something of a predictable pattern for new titles to ship without AA support from AMD, while NVIDIA is more on the ball.

Mainstream

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The GeForce GTS 250 was capable of delivering 2X MSAA at 1920x1200 in BioShock 2 with good framerates. Of course, we tried higher levels of AA, but the framerates dropped sharply, so we had to stick with 2X for our highest playable settings. The Radeon HD 5750 performed extremely well at 1920x1200, but still couldn’t give us AA support.

Life at 1920x1200

At 1920x1200 or 1080p, AA is a more pressing issue for many gamers. So for this resolution, the GeForce GTX 275 and GTS 250 are more attractive products than they were at 2560x1600. Still, the more advanced feature set of the Radeon HD 5850, and the fact that the GeForce GTX 200 series is supposed to be replaced in the next months makes it difficult to recommend the GTX 275 or the GTS 250.