Gory Gaming: Bulletstorm Performance Analyzed

Features
By Don Woligroski
published

Although the game had significant performance issues when it was released, Bulletstorm now benefits from the latest graphics drivers and a patch from its developers. Now is the perfect time to see what kind of hardware this game requires for smooth play.

Benchmark Results: Medium Quality

Medium quality across all settings is the minimum detail level we’re testing. As you can see, even low-end hardware can handle it:

Even the lowly Radeon HD 5570 and GeForce GT 430 can muster about 30 frames per second (FPS) on average at 1920x1080 with a minimum frane rate of 23 FPS.

There’s an obvious frame rate cap in play, even with v-sync disabled. The Bulletstorm configuration files are encrypted, and if you really want to remove this limitation, there are workarounds. But 62 FPS is plenty, and the minimum frame rate is more important than averages. Therefore, we’ll leave the game configured as its developers intended, and as the majority of users play it.

Don Woligroski
40 Comments Comment from the forums
  • JohnnyLucky
    The next time how about installing a game on a solid state drive and a hard disk drive so we can find out about any differences in game play.
    Reply
  • shubham1401
    mayankleoboy1i enjoy the game and i am not embarrassed to admit it on my 3.33ghz core 2 duo and gtx580, it stutters a lot during some areas and level loading. even a slight CPU use by another processes make this game unplayable.
    Didn't happen with me. I have a 2.66Ghz C2D and 9800GT. And I played the whole game with ~45Fps at 1600X900 medium settings.
    :)
    Reply
  • yyrkoon
    JohnnyLuckyThe next time how about installing a game on a solid state drive and a hard disk drive so we can find out about any differences in game play.
    Where have you been for the last decade? It would only effect level loading.
    Reply
  • haplo602
    why are the pictures and descriptions on the cards backwards ? I mean firs the image than the description ? since we are scrolling DOWN normaly, it's the wrong way around.
    Reply
  • Maziar
    Thanks for the review :)
    The good thing about Unreal engine is that the PC game powered by it are almost always optimized and that's what's lacking in most of todays' PC games.
    Reply
  • kevith
    Why this commercial disguised as an article?
    Reply
  • hannibal
    The thing that "Epic is serious about multithreading" is good thing to see! We have had so long time 4 to 6 core CPUs, that it has been a shame that those cores had not been supported in games so far. This is very promising indeed!
    Reply
  • nevertell
    You definitely have to do these more often.
    Reply
  • Formata
    I love this sort of article. Would be nice to see that same sort of comparison done with Witcher 2
    Reply
  • joshyboy82
    I had no interest in buying this game, but I read the review to see if it my change my mind. Sadly it won't. I already am into too many games and I just can't seem to beat CS:S, so when I've run out of Witcher sequels and Portals, I'll only have Battlefields and Diablos to conquer, before I become a full time farmer (as a in-game career) in Skyrim. Sorry about your luck.
    Reply