Prototype Performance Analyzed

Features
By Don Woligroski
published

Image Quality: Radeon Versus GeForce

We scrutinized both GeForce and Radeon screen captures and came to the following conclusion: the image quality is close between the two competitors, but the Nvidia drivers and hardware generate darker shadows than their ATI counterparts, which is a difference we also  observed in our Burnout Paradise analysis.

Which is better? That's certainly subjective. And to be honest, we didn't notice the difference until we directly compared screenshots. After we realized the difference, we noticed that the Nvidia cards would give us nice depth when the sun was in a position to provide good shadows. Alternatively, when we were deep within the cityscape and under the shadows of buildings, the Nvidia cards delivered a darker city with less contrast and definition compared to the Radeon cards.

However, neither of these issues is a game-changer. And as we said above, we never really noticed them until we directly compared the screenshots. We'd be happy to play the game on either camp's hardware from an image quality point of view.

But what about performance? To answer that question, let's move on to the benchmarks.

Don Woligroski
62 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Wayoffbase
    I don't see anyone upgrading from a C2Q to an i7 for a game that's just not all that great looking on high settings, the performance discrepency there was odd. The gameplay itself looks like it might be interesting though.
    Reply
  • Ramar
    Already beat the game a week ago, but it was a thrill-ride. Not sure why the article's so late getting up though.

    At the least, it'll convince people that their older rigs -can- run it. It's basically an optimized and mostly un-buggy Web Of Shadows engine; I'd expect a 7800GT could probably run it okay.
    Reply
  • Ramar
    Wayoffbase...just not all that great looking on high settings,...
    In action it's much better than these screenshots. It pulls a lot of the same tricks MGS4 does on the PS3, where you can tell it's not actually doing that much processing but it looks like it is. Screenshots don't do the game justice because you rarely see a texture or polygon for more than a few seconds at most; in action the particle effects are actually pretty impressive.

    Reply
  • apache_lives
    could this be the first game that takes full advantage of an i7's 8 threads?
    Reply
  • mcbowler
    Hmm.. all its takes is an XBOX 360! $200.00 It is a great game.
    Reply
  • neiroatopelcc
    What happends if you add 8gb ddr2-1200 (ballistix or similar) to the old quadcore ? the i7 had 50% more memory available as well after all - if the game's 64 bit enabled, perhaps the difference isn't the cpu alone - since even at 2.4 the difference is huge.
    Even saints row, which has shit for graphics, runs close to the 2gb memory limit of 32bit games all the time - so perhaps this actually uses whatever is available?

    I saw this game a few weeks ago running great on a laptop that usually does inventor stuff ... I don't know what processor was in it, but I bet no more than an old dualcore T something processor
    Reply
  • radium69
    My Q6600 @ 3.0 Ghz and Geforce GTS 512 runs this game flawless on high settings. I've tried with aa on 4x but found it runnign at 20fps sometimes. It's a fun game. And not to hard on resources.
    Reply
  • Tknockers
    http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,688240/Prototype-CPU-Benchmarks-System-Requirements-and-Screenshots/Practice/
    Reply
  • Tknockers
    p.s. not so great difference between i7 and core2quad on that site..
    Reply
  • chovav
    my Q6600 @ 3.2Ghz and 8800GT 512mb run the game smoothly at 1980x1080 with anti-aliasing x4 and high details.. I actually don't mind the graphics so much, i think they are better than GTAIV's..

    One of the best games ever BTW!!
    Reply