Meet The 2012 Graphics Charts: How We're Testing This Year

DirectX 11 Game Benchmarks, Part 1

DirectX 11 Game Benchmarks

Introduced alongside Windows 7 back in 2009, DirectX 11 is increasingly being adopted by developers, and even some console ports like Crysis 2 benefit visually from the addition of DX 11-based improvements. In light of this, we chose DirectX 11 benchmarks that focus on the many ways Microsoft's most recent API benefits gamers and developers.

Metro 2033

Despite its age, Metro 2033 is still a tough benchmark for the latest graphics cards, especially when the quality settings are cranked up. Its successor, originally planned for this year, seems to have slipped to 2013. Consequently, this game deserves to remain in our benchmark suite.

Crysis 2 DirectX 11 Mode

Crysis 2 intrigues us because DirectX 11, which was added after the title's launch, benefits visual quality but negatively impacts performance. The one notable exception was the Radeon HD 7900-series cards, which actually ran better under DirectX 11 than DirectX 9. More recently, however, driver updates seem to have smoothed out the DirectX 9 performance of those cards. At our Extreme preset exclusively, we use high-res textures, which were added in a patch right next to DirectX 11 support.

Alien vs. Predator

For all performance categories, Alien vs. Predator's built-in benchmark yields an assessment that compromises between image quality and tessellation on one side, and overall playability and performance on the other.

Our DirectX 11 benchmark discussion continues on the next page.