by Rob Williams on March 3, 2009 in Graphics & Displays
The first mid-range offering of NVIDIA’s GeForce 200 series is here, in the form of the GTS 250. As a follow-up to the company’s 9800 GTX+, we already have a good idea of what to expect. But, various improvements aim to make things interesting, such as a redesigned PCB, smaller form-factor, single PCI-E connector, improved temperatures and refreshed pricing.
Not too many game publishers can brag about having such a great track record like Valve can. None of their major game releases have ever been released to anything but praise, which goes to show that not rushing to release a game to please investors can make a huge difference. Take Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal, for example.
Left 4 Dead is one game I didn’t take seriously up until its launch. After playing it though, my opinions changed drastically, and even as I type this, I feel like saving the document and going to play. But, I’m also scared of Zombies, so continue writing I shall. Like Dead Space, this game is a survival shooter, but unlike that game, this title focuses completely on co-op. For the most part, the game is dulled in single player, but team up with three of your friends and let the laughs and excitement begin.
The portion of the level we use for testing is contained within the No Mercy campaign. The ultimate goal in the entire campaign is to make it to the top of a hospital in order to be picked up and brought off to safety. Our run through takes place in the final part of the the campaign, which leads up towards the roof tops. If one thing can be said about this title, it’s that causing a Boomer to explode (as seen in the above screenshot) proves to be one of the most satisfying things to do in any game I’ve played in a while.
Valve’s releasing of games that both look great and run well on most machines is nothing new, with Left 4 Dead being the latest in their collection to be able to brag about such a thing. That said, both the GTX 250 and 9800 GTX+ could handle the game well with all of our configurations.
|
|
|
NVIDIA GTX 295 1792MB x 2
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xMSAA
|
117.701 FPS
|
Palit HD 4870 X2 2GB
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xMSAA
|
117.039 FPS
|
NVIDIA GTX 285 1GB x 2
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xMSAA
|
109.491 FPS
|
Zotac GTX 295 1792MB
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xMSAA
|
102.422 FPS
|
EVGA GTX 285 1GB SSC Edition
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xMSAA
|
86.831 FPS
|
Zotac GTX 285 1GB AMP!
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xMSAA
|
73.075 FPS
|
NVIDIA GTX 285 1GB
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xMSAA
|
72.072 FPS
|
Palit GTX 280 1GB
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xMSAA
|
66.775 FPS
|
Diamond HD 4870 1GB
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xMSAA
|
66.294 FPS
|
XFX GTX 260/216 896MB
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xMSAA
|
56.608 FPS
|
EVGA GeForce GTS 250 1GB SC
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xMSAA
|
47.621 FPS
|
NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 1GB
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xMSAA
|
47.142 FPS
|
ASUS GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xMSAA
|
62.571 FPS
|
Sapphire HD 4830 512MB
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xMSAA
|
48.612 FPS
|
Sapphire HD 4670 512MB
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA
|
39.770 FPS
|
Like the vast majority of our cards here, the GTS 250 could still handle the game with 8xMSAA enabled. This produced no visible lag during my tests, and was rather impressive overall. The 512MB limitation of the 9800 GTX+ became a little more clear here, since its performance with 8xMSAA was not so good. The resulting FPS was similar to the GTS 250, but actually playing the game at that setting showed a far different story, with frequent lag… it was simply undesirable to play.