Benchmark Results: Dead Space
Dead Space is the latest space-horror adapted from the console world to the PC—and unfortunately, it’s painfully apparent in everything from control to graphics quality.
Though we have AA numbers represented here (with corresponding performance dings suggesting that forcing AA and AF in the drivers is actually doing something), there were still very obvious jagged edges, even at 1920x1200 and 2560x1600. Additionally, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 exhibited some strange, repeatable behavior at 1900x1200, scoring lower than the 2560x1600 result.
This title is clearly dominated by Nvidia’s hardware, with even the GTX 280 besting AMD’s flagship. However, it isn’t a game we’d add to our full-time test suite, if only because of the questionable effectiveness of its graphics settings.
Update: In discussing our results with Nvidia, it seems that Dead Space has its own AA path, which is why forcing settings in the control panel has no effect on the game’s visuals. You can turn on AA in the game itself, but doing so made no performance difference in our benchmark.
