Stalker: Clear sky benched

[hatter]

Finally, Crysis has got some competition. This game is a gfx card killer

Stalker: Clear Sky knows only two ways of running: very slow or absolutely playable. Depending on the scene or level the framerate is below 20 fps or climbs to more than 40 fps - but we experienced the former to happen more often.

Anisotropic filtering is recommendable since it doesn't cost a lot of performance. But you should abstain from any kind of anti-aliasing. MSAA already lowers the fps without improving the optics very much. Better graphics can be achieved via transparency FSAA or SSAA, but both modes are unplayable in Stalker: Clear Sky.

In higher resolutions at least, the graphics cards with a lot of video memory can beat their less equipped competitors. The Geforce 8800 GTX for example is 14 percent faster than the 9800 GTX+ at 1,680 x 1,050. AMD's HD 4800s are doing quite well - we cannot confirm the rumors from Russian forums that the Radeon cards would deliver insufficient performance only. The Geforce GTX 260 seems to suffer from driver related problems.

Multi GPU systems are scaling extremely well (up to 100 percent) with the X-Ray Engine - not very surprising since the engine is not new. A special multi GPU article with videos will be released by next week...

If you want to play Stalker: Clear Sky with all details in DX 10 a t a resolution of 1,680 x 1,050, you will have to use a multi GPU solution. If you don't need high framerates you can do with Geforce GTX 280 or a Radeon HD 4870. At 1,280 x 1,024 a Geforce 8800 GTX, 9800 GTX+ or a HD 4850 do quite well, but you will have to go down to 1,024 x 768 to make them display the game really smooth.

Stalker: Clear Sky requires a lot of RAM and video memory. Currently we are testing what processor is best, but at the moment more than one core seems to be useless.

4870 is showing some muscle. It's right up there with GTX280 hyeah:

PCGH - Test/Benchmark: Stalker Clear Sky: DX10 Benchmark Review

 

[Udit]

what is the source of your info?

 

[karanboochra]

Hmm.. what is my 8600GT gonna do ? :O

 

[deathvirus_me]

^^ remember thats at maxed dx10 settings .. u seriously wasn't expecting this game to run maxed out dx10 on a 8600GT now did u ..

 

[ajex]

there are too many bugs in the game that its really difficult to say anything right now ... it lack optimization big time ... its nothing but a few new features to the same x-ray engine of stalker ....

 

[kris30]

unable to get full performance on my 8800GTX SLI

 

[chaqli]

and on my x800xl, the first level was still loading after 10 mins.

 

[abbY]

and on my x800xl, the first level was still loading after 10 mins.

LOL

Any1 here with a 9600GT or equivalent .. played this game ..?
Will it be playable @ 1024X768 DX10 all maxxed out ?

 

[X-Rebel]

As per Guru3D, 8800GT manages only FPS at 1440x900 Dx10 maxed out.

So not to expect much from a 9600GT at Dx10 even at 1024x768.

 

[kris30]

i threw the game aside as i got a copy of warhead which runs better and is a better game than stalker.

 

[techster]

Yeah GSC really dropped the ball with Clear Sky.. It's funny how these game developers put out games even when they know there are issues with them. They should take a page out of ID software's book and release them when they are done!

After 5 BSODS, corrupt save games (which forced me to start playing from way back) and a couple of areas which refused to give frame rates above 15 on any graphics setting, I pretty much gave up playing.

It's sad, because this could have been a great game if they had only spent a couple of months fixing all the bugs.