DX9+SSAO: Mafia II

Mafia II is a single-player third-person action shooter developed by 2K Czech for 2K Games, and is the sequel to Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven released in 2002. Players assume the life of World War II veteran Vito Scaletta, the son of small Sicilian family who immigrates to Empire Bay. Growing up in the slums of Empire Bay teaches Vito about crime, and he's forced to join the Army in lieu of jail time. After sustaining wounds in the war, Vito returns home and quickly finds trouble as he again partners with his childhood friend and accomplice Joe Barbaro. Vito and Joe combine their passion for fame and riches to take on the city, and work their way to the top in Mafia II.

Mafia II is a DirectX-9/10/11 compatible PC video game built on 2K Czech's proprietary Illusion game engine, which succeeds the LS3D game engine used in Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven. In our Mafia-II Video Game Performance article, Benchmark Reviews explored characters and gameplay while illustrating how well this game delivers APEX PhysX features on both AMD and NVIDIA products. Thanks to DirectX-11 APEX PhysX extensions that can be processed by the system's CPU, Mafia II offers gamers is equal access to high-detail physics regardless of video card manufacturer.

• Mafia II
  • Extreme Settings: (Antialiasing, 16x AF, High Shadow Quality, High Detail, High Geometry, Ambient Occlusion)

Mafia II Extreme Quality Settings

Cost Analysis: Mafia II (1680x1050)

• $142 Radeon HD 5770 1GB costs $3.99 per FPS
• $167 GeForce GTX 460 768MB costs $3.80 per FPS
• $180 Radeon HD 6850 1GB costs $3.73 per FPS
• $188 Radeon HD 5830 1GB costs $4.77 per FPS
• $220 GeForce GTX 460 1GB costs $4.70 per FPS
• $240 Radeon HD 6870 1GB costs $4.20 per FPS
• $260 EVGA GTX 460 FTW 1GB costs $4.55 per FPS
• $262 Radeon HD 5850 1GB costs $4.81 per FPS
• $292 GeForce GTX 470 1GB costs $5.21 per FPS

Test Summary: Of all the video games presently available for DirectX-11 platforms, Mafia II is by far one of the most detailed and feature-rich. The AMD Radeon HD 6850 easily outperforms the Radeon HD 5830 and both 768MB and 1GB versions of the GeForce GTX 460, while offering the best value of the entire group. The Radeon HD 6870 also performs extremely well on Mafia II, and surpasses both the EVGA GeForce GTX 460 FTW and Radeon HD 5850 video cards in both performance and value. At 1680x1050 resolution with extreme quality settings, the Radeon HD 5770 produced 25.5 FPS in BattleForge compared to 27.0 FPS with the Radeon HD 5830, while the Radeon HD 6850 produced 35.3 FPS. It seems that Mafia II performs extremely well for AMD Barts GPUs when APEX PhysX effects are disabled, however these effects really help make the game more realistic.

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