DX11: Metro 2033

Metro 2033 is an action-oriented video game with a combination of survival horror, and first-person shooter elements. The game is based on the novel Metro 2033 by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. It was developed by 4A Games in Ukraine and released in March 2010 for Microsoft Windows. Metro 2033 uses the 4A game engine, developed by 4A Games. The 4A Engine supports DirectX-9, 10, and 11, along with NVIDIA PhysX and GeForce 3D Vision.

The 4A engine is multi-threaded in such that only PhysX had a dedicated thread, and uses a task-model without any pre-conditioning or pre/post-synchronizing, allowing tasks to be done in parallel. The 4A game engine can utilize a deferred shading pipeline, and uses tessellation for greater performance, and also has HDR (complete with blue shift), real-time reflections, color correction, film grain and noise, and the engine also supports multi-core rendering.

Metro 2033 featured superior volumetric fog, double PhysX precision, object blur, sub-surface scattering for skin shaders, parallax mapping on all surfaces and greater geometric detail with a less aggressive LODs. Using PhysX, the engine uses many features such as destructible environments, and cloth and water simulations, and particles that can be fully affected by environmental factors.

NVIDIA has been diligently working to promote Metro 2033, and for good reason: it is the most demanding PC video game we've ever tested. When their flagship GeForce GTX 480 struggles to produce 27 FPS with DirectX-11 anti-aliasing turned two to its lowest setting, you know that only the strongest graphics processors will generate playable frame rates. All of our tests enable Advanced Depth of Field and Tessellation effects, but disable advanced PhysX options.

• Metro 2033
  • Extreme Settings: (Very-High Quality, AAA, 16x AF, Advanced DoF, Tessellation, 180s Fraps Chase Scene)

Metro 2033 Extreme Quality Settings

Cost Analysis: Metro 2033 (1680x1050)

• $167 GeForce GTX 460 768MB costs $8.88 per FPS
• $180 Radeon HD 6850 1GB costs $7.20 per FPS
• $220 GeForce GTX 460 1GB costs $10.68 per FPS
• $240 Radeon HD 6870 1GB costs $8.42 per FPS
• $260 EVGA GTX 460 FTW 1GB costs $9.89 per FPS
• $262 Radeon HD 5850 1GB costs $11.29 per FPS
• $292 GeForce GTX 470 1GB costs $10.21 per FPS

Test Summary: There's no way to ignore the graphical demands of Metro 2033, and only the most powerful GPUs will deliver a decent visual experience unless you're willing to seriously tone-down the settings. Even when these settings are turned down, Metro 2033 is a power-hungry video game that crushes frame rates. Although Metro 2033 offers advanced PhysX options, these settings are available only to NVIDIA GeForce video cards and disabled for our tests.

As demonstrated in Mafia II, the AMD Barts GPU truly thrives on the newest DirectX-11 video games - so long as PhysX is disabled. With all settings being equal, the Radeon HD 6850 outperforms both the 768MB and 1GB versions of the GeForce GTX 460 as well as the Radeon HD 5850 that's been competing with the 6870. As for the Radeon HD 6870, it surpassed the factory-overclocked EVGA GeForce GTX 460 FTW video card as well as the much more expensive GeForce GTX 470.

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