Once you get the feel for the game, you are hooked and though a somewhat disturbing airport level is a little confusing and bothersome, the rest of the single player game is just outstanding. It's like that: the further you get into the game, the better is gets, especially at Act III you just can't stop playing the single player campaign.
Short -- that's what the game feels like. I played the entire campaign in roughly an hour or five or something, but it certainly didn't disappoint -- Sir no Sir. The graphics as always are immersive and nice, the graphics engine is getting outdated though. It's the same 3D engine they used for the original Call of Duty Modern Warfare. Infinity Ward did squeeze and tweak every little graphical optimization out of it, ensuring the the graphics quality still is up-to par with modern age games and most of all, that makes it playable for a large audience with an even larges variety of graphics cards.
This is Guru3D.com we have a fetish for graphics cards and games, as such we took no less than twenty-three graphics configurations and put performance to the test.
Over the next few pages a word or two about the game, some image quality comparisons and obviously a nice lengthy VGA chart ranging from monitor resolution 1280x1024 up-to 2560x1600 measured with and with out AA.
How much of a graphics card will you need to play this game ? Well let's find out you guys.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
Modern Warfare 2 is set five years on from COD4 and brings a new villain into town: Vladimir Makarov. All the trouble all starts when Makarov frames the US for a terrorist attack on a Russian airport (yes, the infamous airport level). The rest of the story follows the same intertwined British and US mission format as before, and the missions are all incredible set-pieces that involve storming oil rigs, climbing icy cliffs and, of course, an adrenaline packed snowmobile chase.
Although somewhat short -- playing through the campaign brings along the same feel of being in a movie -- an action flick. COD MF2 offers many huge levels to play through in single player. The game itself is truly global as you travel to four different continents, and there's even a brief non-playable sequence in orbit.
From raiding a Russian military base to running through the slums of Rio to fighting in the Oval Office itself, Infinity Ward knows how to craft a single player experience that will keep you on your trigger and your toes. AI for the enemies is fairly solid as well, tThey will run toward you but also try to duck and flank your position at times so it's not entirely scripted.
The single player campaign is totally fantastic and provides a rollercoaster ride that, while on fairly obvious rails, is so exciting you'll blow through it in no time. The first (and probably biggest) new feature comes in the main menu. Alongside the expected Campaign and Multiplayer modes, we now have something called “Spec Ops”.
Visually as stated the 3D engine seems to bee the same as the COD4 one, it's tweaked and nearly abused to push out the very best of it's capability. the result is a very decent looking game really, smoke, fog, sun, vegetation detailed texturing of objects building and characters. Yeah the game really does look good.
As such this is where we'll start off the VGA review, we'll be testing the game with the following graphics configurations:
| GeForce 8800 GT 512MB |
| GeForce 9600 GT 512MB |
| GeForce 9800 GX2 1024MB |
| GeForce GTS 250 512MB |
| GeForce GTX 260 896MB SP216 |
| GeForce GTX 275 896MB |
| Geforce GTX 280 1024MB |
| Geforce GTX 285 1024MB |
| Geforce GTX 285 SLI |
| GeForce GTX 295 1792MB |
| GeForce GTX 9800+ 512MB |
| Radeon 3870 512MB |
| Radeon 3870 X2 1024MB |
| Radeon 4830 512MB |
| Radeon 4850 512MB |
| Radeon 4870 1024MB |
| Radeon 4870 X2 2048MB |
| Radeon 5870 1024MB |
| Radeon 5870 Crossfire |
| Radeon HD 4890 1024MB |
| Radeon HD 5750 1024MB |
| Radeon HD 5770 1024MB |
| Radeon HD 5850 1024MB |
So we used no less than twenty-three graphics card configurations ranging from mid-range to the current high-end graphics cards.
The good news is that Call of Duty MF2 uses the exact same 3D engine as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. It does has some new graphics tweaks. Because COD MF2 it targeted as a very broad audience, Infinity Ward made sure it's playable on pretty much any modern graphics card. Do not be afraid to select anything and everything you can.
We'll be testing with all image quality settings as high as possible with everything maxed out. It's as simple as that. AA wise we'll test both 0xAA and 4xAA (selected in-game).
We'll test at the following resolutions:
- 1280x1024
- 1600x1200
- 1920x1200
- 2560x1600
This covers the entire scope of important resolutions with common once as 1920x1080(HDTV) being very close to 1920x1200.
Image Quality
First thing we need to do is verify that the image quality between ATI Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce cards are the same so we can objectively measure performance.
Above the reference image -- Look at the nicely anti-aliased power lines to the top left of the screenshot. Click to see a full screen reference screenshot (2560x1600)
Applied in-game is 4xAA for both chipset makers -- long story short, there's no visual difference in AA methods. This is the most common setting used by you guys. And people just do not seem to care about more then 4xAA -- which could be possible if we'd dive into the graphics card driver and enforce it.
We now turn off AA and look at object quality. E.g. are the vendors both enforcing the same texture quality, filters etc.
Now looking closely you'll notice a little color-tone difference. This scene has a lot of volumetric fog consistently moving from the right to left, which is the cause of that. Look at the rock to the left of the sniper compare NVIDIA's and ATI's screenshot. The reality is that there is very little difference to spot with the naked eye. Also observe the snipers gun and the sniper itself, there's virtually no difference, great stuff.
Monitor resolution 2560x1600
Time to show you some performance results. We start at the top of our test resolution, 2560x1600 which is GPU limited and then move onwards up-to 1280x1024 which is more CPU limited.
First off the results without any anti-aliasing
Image Quality setting:
- 0x Anti-Aliasing
- 16x Anisotropic Filtering
- All settings maxed out
Image Quality setting:
- 4x Anti-Aliasing
- 16x Anisotropic Filtering
- All settings maxed out
The monitor resolution 2560x1600 is always the best resolution to check out RAW GPU performance of high end graphics cards. Though we'll show a handful of multi-GPU results neither ATI or NVIDIA has proper support for this new title in the current WHQL drivers.
We simply renamed the game executable towards CoDWaW.exe (Call of Duty - World at War) after which multi-GPU gaming kicked in, though not optimal for ATI.
At this uber resolutions with 4xAA enabled above a GeForce GTS 250 or Radeon HD 5750 will allow you to play the game pretty well at this resolution. But the reality is .. how many of you actually have a 30" Monitor, right?
BTW look at the GeForce GTX 295 go there -- dang (!) It'll do that throughout the entire benchmark session.
Update - there's a performance anomoly with the GTX 285 SLI. Until further notice please disregard it. We'll look into this again later this week.
Monitor resolution 1920x1200
Image Quality setting:
- 0x Anti-Aliasing
- 16x Anisotropic Filtering
- All settings maxed out
Image Quality setting:
- 4x Anti-Aliasing
- 16x Anisotropic Filtering
- All settings maxed out
The 1920x1200 resolution is a little more down to earth really. Look at that outdated GeForce 9800 GX2 go, it couldn't shine in 2560x1600 because it was a little memory limited with 512MB per GPU.
If you play your games at 1920x1080/1200 then really with all eye candy ad 4xAA enabled all you need is a 100 USD Radeon HD 4830 or even old GeForce 8800 GT.
We are now at a stage where Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire caves in, it's multi-GPU mode is requiring a lot from the CPU, as such we see massive CPU limitation for ATI's multi-GPU solutions. NVIDIA is suffering way less from this issue and definitely shines.
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