EVGA GeForce GTX 285 SSC Edition

While some popular game franchises are struggling to keep themselves healthy, Call of Duty doesn’t have much to worry about. This is Treyarch’s third go at a game in the series, and a first for one that’s featured on the PC. All worries leading up to this title were all for naught, though, as Treyarch delivered on all promises.

To help keep things fresh, CoD: World at War focuses on battles not exhaustively explored in previous WWII-inspired games. These include battles which take place in the Pacific region, Russia and Berlin, and variety is definitely something this game pulls off well, so it’s unlikely you’ll be off your toes until the end of the game.

For our testing, we use a level called “Relentless”, as it’s easily one of the most intensive levels in the game. It features tanks, a large forest environment and even a few explosions. This level depicts the Battle of Peleliu, where American soldiers advance to capture an airstrip from the Japanese. It’s a level that’s both exciting to play and one that can bring even high-end systems to their knees.

We’re off to a great start here, with noticeable performance increases over both the reference GTX 285 and also Zotac’s pre-overclocked AMP! edition card. The differences are still rather small and unnoticeable in regular gameplay, however, and that’s to be expected. In our 2560×1600 test, the performance shown against the GTX 295 is quite interesting. The GTX 285 SSC performs about 33% less, but still offers just enough FPS to have completely smooth gameplay at the game’s max settings. Greater differences may be seen if CoD allowed higher anti-aliasing modes, but that’s not the case (higher modes can’t even be forced).

Even the reference GTX 285 is beefy enough to allow maximum detail settings at 2560×1600, so basically, the faster your GTX 285, the slightly higher the average FPS. It’s a good feeling to be able to totally max out a game and still have absolutely smooth gameplay.