Prototype Performance Analyzed

Features
By Don Woligroski
published

Benchmark Results: Medium Detail

Medium detail affords us the luxury of shadows. In addition, the game will swap high-detail 3D props (like the cars) for low-detail versions of the same props when the object is farther away from the player's viewpoint when compared to the low-detail setting. Because of the inclusion of shadows, if your graphics card can handle it, we highly recommend the medium detail setting at the very least.

We begin with 1280x1024, and can see that the Radeon HD 4650 is already out of the running as a contender with its minimum frame rate of 22 FPS. The game is playable, but it's far from ideal. Meanwhile, all of the other cards are once again bottlenecked by the CPU. Only the GeForce 9600 GT is struggling to reach the average 65-75 FPS the other cards enjoy.

Upping the resolution to 1680x1050, the situation remains the same.

Even at 1920x1200, the CPU bottleneck is asserting itself as the primary performance limitation instead of the graphics cards.

At 2560x1600 we can see some definite leaders and followers in the range, but the margins are still surprisingly close. The GeForce 9600 GT has been slowed to choppy performance, but all of the higher-tier cards are averaging over 40 FPS and about 30 FPS minimum, which is still very smooth.

At this point, it is obvious that the game is extremely dependant on the speed of the platform and not on the speed of the graphics system. As long as a minimum level of graphics power is available, performance is very close across the spectrum. 

Don Woligroski
62 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Wayoffbase
    I don't see anyone upgrading from a C2Q to an i7 for a game that's just not all that great looking on high settings, the performance discrepency there was odd. The gameplay itself looks like it might be interesting though.
    Reply
  • Ramar
    Already beat the game a week ago, but it was a thrill-ride. Not sure why the article's so late getting up though.

    At the least, it'll convince people that their older rigs -can- run it. It's basically an optimized and mostly un-buggy Web Of Shadows engine; I'd expect a 7800GT could probably run it okay.
    Reply
  • Ramar
    Wayoffbase...just not all that great looking on high settings,...
    In action it's much better than these screenshots. It pulls a lot of the same tricks MGS4 does on the PS3, where you can tell it's not actually doing that much processing but it looks like it is. Screenshots don't do the game justice because you rarely see a texture or polygon for more than a few seconds at most; in action the particle effects are actually pretty impressive.

    Reply
  • apache_lives
    could this be the first game that takes full advantage of an i7's 8 threads?
    Reply
  • mcbowler
    Hmm.. all its takes is an XBOX 360! $200.00 It is a great game.
    Reply
  • neiroatopelcc
    What happends if you add 8gb ddr2-1200 (ballistix or similar) to the old quadcore ? the i7 had 50% more memory available as well after all - if the game's 64 bit enabled, perhaps the difference isn't the cpu alone - since even at 2.4 the difference is huge.
    Even saints row, which has shit for graphics, runs close to the 2gb memory limit of 32bit games all the time - so perhaps this actually uses whatever is available?

    I saw this game a few weeks ago running great on a laptop that usually does inventor stuff ... I don't know what processor was in it, but I bet no more than an old dualcore T something processor
    Reply
  • radium69
    My Q6600 @ 3.0 Ghz and Geforce GTS 512 runs this game flawless on high settings. I've tried with aa on 4x but found it runnign at 20fps sometimes. It's a fun game. And not to hard on resources.
    Reply
  • Tknockers
    http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,688240/Prototype-CPU-Benchmarks-System-Requirements-and-Screenshots/Practice/
    Reply
  • Tknockers
    p.s. not so great difference between i7 and core2quad on that site..
    Reply
  • chovav
    my Q6600 @ 3.2Ghz and 8800GT 512mb run the game smoothly at 1980x1080 with anti-aliasing x4 and high details.. I actually don't mind the graphics so much, i think they are better than GTAIV's..

    One of the best games ever BTW!!
    Reply