by Rob Williams on June 17, 2014 in Graphics & Displays
On the lookout for a gaming GPU at around the $250 mark? Need it to handle games at 1080p in great detail or 1440p at good detail? EVGA has a solution for both of those needs. It comes to us in the form of the GeForce GTX 760 Superclocked – complete with ACX cooler. Read on to see how it compares to NVIDIA’s reference model.
Crysis has become infamous for punishing even top-end systems, but let’s be fair: The Metro series matches, if not exceeds its requirement for graphical horsepower. That was proven by the fact that we used Metro 2033 in our testing for a staggering three years – only to be replaced by its sequel, Last Light. I’m not particularly a fan of this series, but I am in awe of its graphics even at modest settings.
Manual Run-through: Because this game is a real challenge to benchmark with for both the reasons of variability in the results and the raw challenge, I choose to use the built-in benchmark here but rely on Fraps to give me more accurate results.
Note: Metro Last Light‘s built-in benchmark is not representative of the entire game; some levels will punish a GPU much worse than this benchmark will (namely, “The Chase”, which has lots of smoke and explosions). What this means is that while these settings might suffice for much of the game, there might be instances where the performance degrades enough during a certain chapter or portion of a chapter to force a graphics setting tweak.
The sky’s the limit with regards to how much you want Metro: Last Light to bog-down your PC, but at the still great-looking “Normal” settings, the GTX 760 can handle the game just fine at 1080p, and doesn’t come too far behind our ideal 60 FPS goal at 1440p (though, it’s times like this when the “Note” above is important).
Sleeping Dogs
Many have called Sleeping Dogs (our review) the “Asian Grand Theft Auto“, but the game does a lot of things differently that helps it stand out of the crowd. For example, in lieu of supplying the player with a gazillion guns, Sleeping Dogs focuses heavily on hand-to-hand combat. There are also many collectibles that can be found to help upgrade your character and unlock special fighting abilities – and if you happen to enjoy an Asian atmosphere, this game should fit the bill.
Manual Run-through: The run here takes place during the chapter “Amanda”, on a dark, dank night. The saved game begins us at the first apartment in the game (in North Point), though that’s not where I begin capturing the framerate. Instead, I first request our motorcycle from the garage. Once set, I begin recording the framerate and drive along a specific path all the way to Aberdeen, taking about two minutes.
Continuing the trend, the GTX 760 handles Sleeping Dogs just fine at max detail (with the exception of the useless “Extreme” anti-aliasing setting). At 1440p the performance is less-than-ideal, but later we’ll find out that a simple change can fix that right up.