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: High Quality 4x AA

Now we’ll see how performance plays out with 4x anti-aliasing enabled:

This feature really separates high-end cards from more mainstream boards, with the Radeon HD 6670 and GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 barely able to handle 1680x1050. At 1920x1080, the Radeon HD 5770 and GeForce GTX 550 Ti are the cheapest cards are able to cope and provide a minimum of 25 FPS.

CrossFire appears to be working, with the results from two cards notably higher than a single Radeon HD 6850 (though even a single card provides smooth performance at this maximum setting). SLI appears to have a problem at 1680x1050 with 4x AA enabled, but it works fine at 1080p and 1280x1024.

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