Tom's Hardware Graphics Charts: Performance In 2014

Metro: Last Light And Thief

Metro: Last Light

Is it better to create your own benchmark, or use a game's built-in test designed to deliberately push graphics hardware? In this case, Metro: Last Light includes a tool for dialing-in settings and creating repetition. It's a worst-case example of what your GPU will have to endure when you play. And, if you already own Metro, it's easy to replicate the options we picked and compare your machine's performance.

The following video shows one of the four benchmark runs we execute. The first loop heats the GPU being tested, while results from the last three are averaged together.

The 4A engine pushes almost every graphics card to its limit, so its inclusion is intended to represent some of the lowest performance you'll see from any given board.

Thief

Thief is demanding in its own right. It also includes a built-in benchmark, which gives you an open invitation to do some comparative testing at home. That metric is quite memory-heavy and it'll punish any graphics card without enough on-board RAM to handle the resolution and settings you pick.

The test is short enough that we're able to run it three times back-to-back. Again, the first iteration heats each GPU, while the second two are averaged. The video shows the benchmark sequence we use for our chart results.

And here are the settings in a table: