Date:
Tuesday , July 21, 2009
Author:
Mark Warner
Editor:
Brent Justice
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Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood Gameplay Perf. and IQ

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood is in town to once again provide your spaghetti western fix. The first game broke new ground for graphical fidelity, and we're very keen to learn if this new game will do the same. We'll take a good long look at Bound in Blood with eight of the best video cards around.

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Test System Setup

For our test system platform we are using an ASUS Blitz Extreme motherboard with an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 processor at 3.66GHz, and 4GB of OCZ Platinum series DDR3-1600. For the power supply, we will be using a CoolerMaster Real Power Pro 1250W .

While it might be a bit "overkill," we use the 3.6GHz overclocked quad-core processor in an attempt to keep from putting our evaluation into a position of being CPU limited. Obviously, we make every effort to not use CPU limited games for video card evaluations, but the 3.6GHz processor seems to put many peoples’ minds at ease when it comes to that subject.

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Driver Setup

With both the NVIDIA and AMD video cards we will be using the latest drivers. For the NVIDIA products we will be using the ForceWare 186.18 WHQL driver. For the AMD products, we will be using the Catalyst 9.6 WHQL driver.

NOTE: The 512MB version of the Radeon HD 4870 will be making a cameo appearance in the apples-to-apples section of this evaluation to test the effect of video memory on gameplay performance in Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. For that test, the HD 4870 512MB will be using AMD’s Catalyst 9.6 WHQL driver as well.

Evaluation Method

We evaluate what each video card configuration can supply us in terms of a playable gaming experience while supplying the best culmination of resolution and "eye candy" graphical settings. We focus on quality and immersion of the gameplay experience rather than how many frames per second the card can get in a canned benchmark or prerecorded timedemo situation that often do not represent real gameplay like you would experience at home. Then we will follow with apples-to-apples testing based on real gameplay as well.