Benchmarks - Bioshock Test 2

The second benchmark that we use from the game Bioshock shows the Plasmid intro. This sequence, which is basically a cut-scene using the game's 3D engine, makes heavy use of shader effects. The results here are slightly higher across the board than in Test 1 (Rapture intro).

None of the cards had any trouble running this benchmark. This time around, the ATI cards don't freeze. On Nvidia's side, the sequence plays smoothly starting with the 8600 GT. ATI's 2600 XT does well in this benchmark, while the 2600 Pro produces only 22.5 fps. Again, we didn't see any meaningful performance difference between cards with 256 MB and 512 MB or 320 MB and 640 MB of video memory. We attribute this to the fact that FSAA was not available in this game. We did notice that the load times were extremely short on the Geforce 8800 Ultra.

The slower graphics chips such as the Geforce 8400 and 8500 produce identical results in Test 1 and Test 2. This is a good indication that they have reached their limit. To play at smooth frame rates on these cards, you will need to drop the detail level down a notch or two. The same thing probably applies to the Radeon HD 2400 Pro and 2400 XT.