Introduction

The highest performance graphics card contenders from ATI and NVIDIA are in their places on the top of the graphics hardware "hill" right now, and for the first time (in a while at least) there is no clear performance leader. With both the GeForce 7900 GTX and Radeon X1900 XTX available for around $500, and with both having similar performance capabilities, those gamers looking for the absolute best have to make a difficult choice. NVIDIA seems to hold an edge with their efficient new card design and focus on efficiency, but both of these cards are very well matched. Of course, when shopping for a card, we can't all base our choice on whether or not it's the fastest in the world, unfortunately, but we can thankfully find other cards available which will more than suit our needs given our particular situation.

We've mentioned this in the past, but it is important to consider the types of games you play, or are planning on playing, as well as your system capabilities when choosing a new graphics solution. A reason for this would be to avoid overspending on graphics hardware that can't be used to its fullest potential on a certain system. For instance, if you have a maximum screen resolution of 1280x1024 - like all 17" and 19" LCDs - there's very little need for 7900 SLI or X1900 CrossFire. Also, while games like Half-Life 2 and Counter Strike: Source have been around for a while, they are both still very popular; if you're primarily playing slightly older games, a card much less powerful than the 7900 or X1900 will run them at their highest settings without difficulty.

Luckily, there are a wide range of graphics cards out there to suit the average gamer's needs, and with a little research and consideration you're sure to find the right one. Of course, the games are what compel us to buy shiny new graphics hardware in the first place, and there are many great ones out now for us to choose from.

Today we're looking at the game Black and White 2, and specifically how it performs on the latest high-end cards from ATI and NVIDIA. This is one of the more graphically demanding games we test (in the same league as games like F.E.A.R.), so we are very interested to see how cards like the ones mentioned above handle this game at the highest settings. We are giving this game it's own article this time instead of lumping it in with other titles because of some performance improvements we've seen with the latest patch from Lionhead. Before we talk about performance, lets take a look at the game itself.



Black and White 2

Black and White 2 is the sequel to Lionhead's original Black and White, a game which caused a stir in the gaming world when it was first released in 2001 because of the innovative creature AI and world physics. The sequel carries on the "God-on-a-budget" style of game play of the first, with much less of the sometimes frustrating micro-management seen in the original.

The basic game mechanics in Black and White 2 haven't changed much: you gather resources, build walls and structures for your followers, and interact with the people and land. All this is done from a God's perspective via a floating, disembodied hand. While the mechanics haven't changed much, the goals are a bit more straightforward this time.

In the original, there were tasks to achieve on each of the five lands, but at it's heart the game felt more focused on letting you play with your creature. In this follow-up, the goal is to convert all the people of the different settlements on the map into your followers by either impressing them with your towns and miracles (Good), or by simple hostile takeover (Evil). As you play, the game decides whether each of your actions is "good" or "evil" and aligns you accordingly with different visual results.



While there is debate at how much of an improvement the game play is over the original game, there is no doubt among anyone that the graphics of Black and White 2 are superior to the first. Black and White 2 is in fact one of the most graphically advanced games out presently, using some of the newer SM3.0 aspects to striking effect, particularly with certain features like water. An added bonus is that nearly everything in the game is able to be interacted with, either in subtle ways (i.e. a field of wheat bends and the water ripples realistically as you zoom in close and brush your hand over it), or not so subtle ways (i.e. watch as the buildings and walls tend to collapse and splinter realistically when you throw a massive boulder into them in your divine wrath).



Black and White 2's excellent graphics make it a good benchmark, and we've used it many times for past performance tests. Unfortunately, one of the problems with this game has been that it tends to favor NVIDIA graphics cards over ATI cards, despite the ATI splash screen at the game's startup. This had us scratching our heads, but we suspected it might be fixed in a later game patch. We aren't exactly sure why they didn't get this right earlier, and it's rather misleading for ATI/Lionhead to promote hardware that doesn't perform as well with this game for so long. However, it looks like they've finally got it right with the version 1.2 patch as our performance tests will show.



Black and White 2 v1.1 vs. v1.2 Performance

We were interested to see what kind of performance difference there is between the 1.1 and 1.2 patch, so we tested the highest end cards from both ATI and NVIDIA with both patches. We ran the benchmark at 4 different resolutions, with AA enabled. Here are the results, starting with NVIDIA.





As the graphs show, there isn't a significant difference in framerates between the two patches for this card. This basically means that the 1.2 update doesn't really affect performance for NVIDIA cards.





On the X1900 however, we see that there is a marked improvement in all resolutions with the 1.2 patch, and while the 7900 GTX formerly outperformed the X1900 XTX in the previous patch, it now lags slightly behind the ATI card. While the difference isn't that great between the X1900 XTX and 7900 GTX, ATI's performance gain between patches is good news for any ATI owners with this game.

Now let's look at the general performance tests.



Test Setup

We wanted to get a sense of how well the latest high-end hardware could run this game, but we also wanted to have older budget and midrange cards included in our performance tests for comparison. We included as many cards from both ATI and NVIDIA as we could in order to understand the game's overall playability, particularly after the 1.2 update.

We broke down the performance tests into 3 groups. For the high-end card tests, we enabled "High Antialiasing" (basically 4xAA with some tweaks and optimizations) and used the four resolutions tested on the last page (2048x1536, 1920x1440, 1600x1200, 1280x1024). The following cards make up the high-end group:

NVIDIA 7900 GTX
NVIDIA 7900 GT
NVIDIA 7800 GTX (512)
NVIDIA 7800 GT
ATI X1900 XT-X
ATI X1900 XT
ATI X1800 XL

In the midrange group we tested the game at 1600x1200, 1280x1024, and 1024x768 without AA enabled. Here are the cards we in this group:

NVIDIA 7800 GT
NVIDIA 7600 GT
NVIDIA 6800 GS
NVIDIA 6600 GT
ATI X1800 XL
ATI X1800 GTO
ATI X1600 XT

Note that the 7800 GT and X1800 XL are borderline high-end/midrange, so we tested these two cards in both categories. If you're wondering how some of the other "high-end" cards fare without AA, you can use them as a guide. We also included X1800 GTO numbers, and we are starting to see a few of these parts available for purchase.

For the low-end tests, we tested at 1280x1024, 1024x768, 800x600, and 640x480 without AA. These are the cards for this group:

NVIDIA 7300 GS
NVIDIA 6200 TC (TurboCache)
ATI X1300

Our test system was equipped as follows:

ATI Radeon Express 200 based system
NVIDIA nForce 4 based system
AMD Athlon 64 FX-57
2x 1GB DDR400 2:3:2:8
120 GB Seagate 7200.7 HD
600 W OCZ PowerStream PSU

Note that sound was disabled for all tests.



Performance Tests

We've shown scores from Black and White 2 in the past, but these new numbers give us a better idea of the current post-patch performance. We would assume that's the way most people will want to play the game, assuming they're still playing it. The 1.2 patch definitely helps ATI's performance, and this also gives us the opportunity to see how the latest NVIDIA and ATI cards perform relative to other offerings.







At the highest resolutions and with AA set to "High", we see a bit of memory limitation even with the fastest cards. This isn't too surprising, given the number of pixels being processed, but the game still runs beautifully and smoothly on the 7800 GTX 512, 7900 GTX, and both X1900s here. For those keeping score, the latest patch now allows X1900 cards to claim the top spots.

We didn't include the 7800 GTX (normal) numbers because we've seen previously how its performance is nearly identical to the new 7900 GT. The X1800 XL struggles with the demo at these resolutions, but the game is generally playable at 1280x1024 with high AA mode (see below) - some may even find 1600x1200 with high AA to be acceptable; remember that this is not a twitch game like most FPS titles, so 40+ frame rates aren't required.







Moving to the mid-range cards, we can again see how the recent patch helped ATI in performance. The NVIDIA numbers no longer dominate ATI's, and in fact the benchmarks tend to favor ATI as we saw with the high-end cards.

One interesting thing we see is how similar the X1800 GTO and XL numbers are. With the X1800 GTO already on the market for much less money than the X1800 XL, the GTO's better value is obvious. We'll have more on this soon. The 7600 GT also competes extremely well in the mid-range category, considering the price.







Something that is immediately noticeable in the low-end cards (on the bottom graph) is that the 6200 TC shows higher performance than the 7300 GS even though it is the least powerful of the two. The reason for this is that with the 6200 TC installed, Black and White 2 blanked out certain options that are normally available such as bloom and distortion effects. This obviously made the game run faster, but at the cost of the graphics and consequently, the game appeared very flat and dull graphically.

This game isn't well suited for lower-end cards, as these frame rates show. True, you may be able to play it, and it might be very enjoyable, but to get the most out of Black and White 2 you'll probably need at least a mid-range card.



Final Words

The fact that Black and White 2 is a beautiful game is undeniable. The water alone is one of the absolute best water effects we've seen in any game. SM3.0 effects are put to good use, with blooms from lights in the towns or miracles creating a warm and realistic effect. The miracles are all very impressive, and each map is loaded with details. All of the little touches combine with the overall impressiveness of the towns and villager AI to create a seamless and complex gaming world.

Anyone can tell you, however, that a game's graphics do not necessarily make it good. Some of us here at AnandTech enjoy the game very much, despite flaws like glitchy creature and people AI and limited replay value, but ultimately it will be for the reader to decide whether he or she likes it or not. Luckily, it isn't our job to report on how much fun a game is, but just on the technical aspects of the graphics and performance.

Because this is more of a strategy game, the frame rates don't have to be excessively high to provide smooth game play. Whereas in a game like Battlefield 2 a minimum framerate of 30fps would be desirable, Black and White 2 could be enjoyed with a framerate of around 20fps - perhaps even lower, depending on personal preference. This being the case, for those with older monitors limited to 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 resolution, a card like the X1600 XT or 6800 GS would be the perfect choice to be able to run this game at the highest quality settings (without AA). Unfortunately, the low-end cards we tested had a lot of trouble running the game even at the lowest resolutions, so people with these cards will have to sacrifice some of the nicer quality options in order to run it. This is a disappointing prospect as we feel the game's graphics are one of its main strengths, but that's not to say the game still couldn't be enjoyed with them toned down.

If you are lucky enough to own a card that can play this game at higher resolutions with AA enabled, you will probably be very impressed. Something to note is that Black and White 2 uses a special type of in-game AA which is slightly different than other game's AA. This means that the quality of the AA is noticeably better than in most games, however the improvement comes with an equally large performance hit. We like this feature, regardless of the drop in performance, as it's another way the game puts the high-end cards to good use to make the game look even better. Those unable to run the game with AA will still find the game to be very easy on the eyes, however.

For those looking for a good God-sim game, Black and White 2 will definitely give you a fix, and it's refreshing to see this level of detail and quality in the graphics of this kind of game, or any game for that matter. Lionhead has created a game which seems like it's made for the next generation of graphics hardware, and for this they should be commended. We look forward to seeing what this game company has in store for us in the future.

Even if you're not interested in this particular game or genre, it's still useful to see how the major graphics cards fare across a wide variety of benchmarks. It's unfortunate that this game was launched with relatively poor performance with ATI cards, and it's rather odd at best for a "Get In The Game" title to actually perform "The Way It's Meant To Be Played". Ideally, optimizations to help a game perform better with different hardware platforms shouldn't be required, but that's rarely the case. Hopefully, some of the work that went into helping Lionhead improve B&W2 performance will also help ATI to offer better support and performance on other titles.