Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box, Performance Analysis

Features
By Don Woligroski
published

Test System And Setup

Up front, we have to say that there is no way to turn off vsync in this game. Forcing vsync off with the Radeon or GeForce drivers had no effect.

While EA was nice enough to provide us with testing materials, it wasn't able to give us access to the developers to see if there was a way around the vsync limitation for our benchmarks. Regardless, we will benchmark with a 60 frame per second (FPS) limit cap, and this will reflect exactly the kind of experience that you, the user, will have.

A note about the test system we used for the benchmarks: there is no need to worry that the Q6600 Core 2 Quad CPU overclocked to 2.7 GHz is causing a bottleneck, since our tests showed that this is way more than the game needs to reach its maximum potential. More on that later, though.

We chose a range of graphics cards to test, most of them from our "Best Cards for the Money" monthly recommendations. This gives us a nice, broad spectrum of cards to scrutinize from a range of budgets.

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System Hardware
Processor(s)Intel Core 2 Duo Q6600 (Kentsfield), 2.7 GHz, FSB-1200, 8 MB Cache
PlatformMSI P7N SLI Platinum Nvidia nForce 750i, BIOS A2
RAMA-Data EXTREME DDR2 800+ 2x 2,048 MB, DDR2-800, CL 5-5-5-18 at 1.8 V
Hard DriveWestern Digital Caviar WD50 00AAJS-00YFA, 500 GB, 7200 RPM, 8 MB cache, SATA 3.0 GB/s
NetworkingOn-Board nForce 750i Gigabit Ethernet
Graphics CardsSapphire HD4650 512 MB DDR2 PCIeGigabyte GV-N96TSL-1GI 1 GB DDR3 PCIePowercolor AX4830 512 MB DDR3 PCIeAsus ENGTS250 DK 1 GB DDR3 PCIeAsus EAH4850 MT 512 MB DDR3 PCIeASUS ENGTX260 796 MB DDR3 PCIe
Power SupplyUltra HE1000X, ATX 2.2, 1000W
Software and Drivers
Operating SystemMicrosoft Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit 6.0.6001, SP1
DirectX VersionDirectX 10
Platform DrivernForce Driver Version 15.25
Graphics DriverATI Catalyst 9.3Nvidia Forceware 182.08
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Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate BoxVersion 1.1, Video Quality: All settings at maximum, Demo: Tom's Custom benchmark and FRAPS
Don Woligroski
78 Comments Comment from the forums
  • cruiseoveride
    Where is the people's champion? The HD4870?

    I felt the lighting looked a little more natural on the geforce. The colour on the radeon looked better though
    Reply
  • IzzyCraft
    I like the nvidia shadows more makes it less bland look imo a more definitive look which i like.

    I was wonding why no 4870 like above.

    SSAO on :) reminds me of ripping dvd's and messing with sharpness, debanding etc the telephone wire atleast.
    Reply
  • enterco
    Considering how 'hardware friendly' is this game, probably it will be very successful.
    Reply
  • SpadeM
    The first screen shot comparison is quite tricky :) on the first look you might think the geforce does not render the red car at all.
    Reply
  • ufo_warviper
    Nice article so far. I'm still reading the article, but I just wanted to point out that on page 7 of this review, I think the author somehow confused (a couple times) the 4830 with the 4850, and also the GTS 250 with the GTX 260 cards.

    With the resolution increased to 1920x1200, only the Radeon HD 4830 and GeForce GTS 250 barely pass the playable standard with over 30 FPS minimum frame rates.

    Clearly, he meant the other cards here.
    Reply
  • IzzyCraft
    SpadeMThe first screen shot comparison is quite tricky on the first look you might think the geforce does not render the red car at all.A roll over png or jpg would have probably done better then the color restrivie .gif that was used, Shame that IE8 doesn't support APNG like opera and ff does, it would def make the format much more popular.
    Reply
  • chyll2
    I really like the additional benchmark that imitates different number of cores and clocks. It gives us an idea of performance we would get on similar specs with our system.
    Reply
  • linaaslt
    Somehow i missed benches from hd4770 or 4870/4890 and gtx275. but maybe it's because this game doesn't require good GPU to be playable.
    Reply
  • zehpavora
    I think that, if you want to play this game with 8x MSAA, 8x AA, and High settings, a GTX 275 SLI will work. This game must be amazing at those settings! I like Race Games too, but NSF also lost me on Pro Street. I hope Burnout delivers what EA couldn't...
    Reply
  • DjEaZy
    Phenom 940 @ 3400 HD4870 core@790 GRAM512Mb@4400Mhz
    2x2GB 1066Mhz 5-5-5-15
    this all on 22"@1680x1050 all fx crankt up...
    50~100fps
    Reply