Gory Gaming: Bulletstorm Performance Analyzed

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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: High Quality

At high quality, the lighting model improves dramatically. How does that affect graphics hardware?

There is a definite drop in performance; the Radeon HD 5570 and GeForce GT 430 fall out of the running at 1280x1024. The GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 manages 30 FPS on average and a 25 FPS minimum at 1680x1050. At 1920x1080, however, the Radeon HD 6670 and GeForce GTS 450 are needed for an acceptable minimum frame rate.

It appears that SLI now works in this title where it didn't before, with dual GeForce GTX 460s beating out a single card. On release this wasn't the case. Nvidia's new GeForce 275 beta driver fixes the problem.

It’s difficult to say if CrossFire is working because the single Radeon HD 6850 achieves a result close to the frame rate cap.

Don Woligroski
Contributor

Don Woligroski was a former senior hardware editor for Tom's Hardware. He has covered a wide range of PC hardware topics, including CPUs, GPUs, system building, and emerging technologies.