Deus Ex: Human Revolution Performance Analysis

Features
By
Published

The highly anticipated prequel to the game that started it all, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is now available. We take a close look at this intriguing title, the first to offer in-game morphological anti-aliasing and AMD HD3D support upon its release.

Test System And Benchmarks

Deus Ex: Human Revolution does not come with a canned benchmark, so we’re actually playing the game to demonstrate the kind of performance a player can expect (recording multiple Fraps runs while following a predetermined path in the city of Detroit). Our overclocked 4 GHz Core i5-2500K should remove any reasonable CPU bottleneck from the equation and focus performance on the graphics cards, although we will test a Core i3-2100 and Phenom II X3, X4, and X6 to see how different processors perform.

Swipe to scroll horizontally
Test Hardware
Processor Intel Core i5-2500K (Sandy Bridge)Overclocked to 4 GHz, 6 MB L3 Cache, power-saving settings enabled, Turbo Boost disabled.
Motherboard MSI P67A-GD65, Intel P67 Chipset
Memory OCZ DDR3-2000, 2 x 2 GB, at 1338 MT/s, CL 9-9-9-20-1T
Hard Drive Western Digital Caviar Black 750 GB, 7200 RPM, 32 MB Cache, SATA 3Gb/sSamsung 470 Series SSD 256 GB, SATA 3Gb/s
Graphics Cards GeForce GT 430GeForce GT 240 GDDR5GeForce GTX 550 TiGeForce GTX 460 1 GBGeForce GTX 560 TiGeForce GTX 570Radeon HD 6450Radeon HD 5570Radeon HD 6670Radeon HD 5770Radeon HD 6970
Displays Acer HN274H, 27" 3D Vision (DVI) and HD3D (HDMI 1.4a) compatibleSamsung 7000 Series, 40" 1080p LED HDTV 3D (HDMI 1.4a) compatible
Power Supply Seasonic X760 SS-760KM: ATX12V v2.3, EPS12V, 80 PLUS Gold
CPU Cooler Cooler Master Hyper TX 2
System Software And Drivers
Operating System Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64
DirectX DirectX 11
Graphics Driver GeForce: 280.26 WHQL
Row 12 - Cell 0 AMD Catalyst 11.8 Prerelease
Games
Deus Ex: Human Revolution Modified Crystal Dynamic Engine, Detroit City, Fraps runs
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.

121 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Soma42
    Man as much as I prefer PC gaming I can't wait for the PS4 and Xbox 720 to come out so games will look noticeably better. Might actually want to upgrade my computer by then...

    Anywho, I didn't play the first two am I missing anything if I wanted to pick this up?
    Reply
  • festerovic
    @soma - I personally thought they were average - good, for the time. Not sure if they would stand up to time...

    Interesting to read the dual core HT chips outperformed real cores. Can we look forward to the 2600's HT being utilized in games before the next generation of CPUs comes out?
    Reply
  • haplo602
    nice review, finaly a new DeusEx game for me :-)
    Reply
  • Was AMD dual-core optimizer installed?
    Reply
  • gerchokas
    Good article - i still remember when i first saw the 2000' Deus Ex graphics on my friend's then-brand-new pc, i thought 'maaan... this looks *friggin* REAL!' I instantly knew my old Pentium cpu needed replacing ASAP...
    11 years later, i praise again the great graphics.. but this time they havent cought me off-guard!
    Reply
  • tacoslave
    i really wonder how far developers can take the graphics in 3 years.
    Reply
  • aznshinobi
    Hmm... The Nvidia cards perform better than the AMD cards of equivalent rank. I'm not playing fanboy but didn't AMD fund the studio? Afterall Eyefinity was made use of.
    Reply
  • th3loonatic
    Are there any typos? Coz I see a GTX560 Ti listed as a card used to test, but it doesn't appear in the results.
    Reply
  • fyasko
    festerovic@soma - I personally thought they were average - good, for the time. Not sure if they would stand up to time...Interesting to read the dual core HT chips outperformed real cores. Can we look forward to the 2600's HT being utilized in games before the next generation of CPUs comes out?
    HT isn't the reason dual core SB CPU's beat 6 core thubans. SB is a better architecture. Hurry up Bulldozer!
    Reply
  • mayankleoboy1
    @ Don Woligroski
    i want the CPU benchmarks at 1080p with highest settings.
    benches at 1024x768 are irrelevant. the gamer of today is atleast 1680, preferable 1080.
    so please add to the benches. also, this would show the real impact of CPU on FPS.
    Reply