AMD’s HD 5550 & 5570 – Now Equipped with GDDR5 Goodness

I admit that I’m not a huge fan of RTS titles, but World in Conflict intrigued me from the get go. After all, so many war-based games continue to follow the same story-lines we already know, and WiC was different. It counteracts the fall of the political and economic situation in the Soviet Union in the late 80’s, and instead provides a storyline that follows it as if the USSR had succeeded by proceeding with war in order to remain in power.

Many RTS games, with their advanced AI, tend to favor the CPU in order to deliver smooth gameplay, but WiC favors both the CPU and GPU, and the graphics prove it. Throughout the game’s missions, you’ll see gorgeous vistas and explore areas from deserts and snow-packed lands, to fields and cities. Overall, it’s a real visual treat for the eyes – especially since you’re able to zoom to the ground and see the action up-close.

Manual Run-through: The level we use for testing is the 7th campaign of the game, called Insurgents. Our saved game plants us towards the beginning of the mission with two squads of five, and two snipers. The run consists of bringing our men to action, and hovering the camera around throughout the duration. The entire run lasts between three and four minutes.

Of all the games we’ve tested with here, World in Conflict stood the greatest chance of seeing gains just because it’s quite hardcore on the system. Thankfully, we did see nice increases with our GDDR5 cards, but because the game is so harsh with our given settings, even GDDR5 isn’t enough to give us good enough framerates. Unless you enjoy sub-20 FPS, that is.

This game is the only one tested where the GDDR5 didn’t allow us to increase the settings, and it’s mostly because the game just requires high framerates to be enjoyable. I found that I preferred the extra boost in performance over increasing the detail level, but I admit it’s highly a matter of opinion. Some might prefer using a higher detail level and dropping down to ~35 FPS, which is still rather playable.