Black & White 2
The next title comes to us from Lionhead Studios. This real time strategy game makes use of HDR, Shader Model 3.0 and expansive landscapes to hit graphics cards right where it hurts-everywhere. For Black & White 2 we turn on all of the graphics features except distortion and antialiasing. For the second set of tests we keep distortion disabled and turn antialiasing to "Full." The benchmark is a recording done with Fraps while running the tutorial at the beginning of the first encounter (after skipping the video intro). The tutorial for the level is rendered in real time and makes for a consistent demo. The hardware driver is set to Application controlled for AA and AF, Vertical Sync is disabled and the mipmap detail option is set to Quality.
The BFG and EVGA cards hold their ground here against the ATI cards. The latter cards are fast, but users will not get the entire visual experience they could have if they had the extra shader model 3.0 details.
