Mafia 2 Demo Benchmark

[JAG87]

No offense to anyone, but in my opinion physx is the biggest gimmick ever invented, at least in the way it's being implemented today.

The two most notable effects are fancy elastic cloth, a ton of debris that doesn't look or behave anything like real life debris.

Doesn't add anything to the game play, and doesn't do much for the eye candy either in my opinion.

I'm sorry but the loss of performance that comes from using it is just unacceptable for the return.

I'd expect to see a total overhaul of the physics and ballistics when physx is turned on.

The whole game should feel different and respond more naturally to the gamer's actions.

End rant.

 

[rairai]

Minimum: 7,8 fps

Maximum: 200.0 fps

Average: 72.1 fps

1920x1080 everything high exept aa off, medium shadows, and psysx off

evga gtx 295, i7 920

 

[tviceman]

No offense to anyone, but in my opinion physx is the biggest gimmick ever invented, at least in the way it's being implemented today.

It's a gimmick. It's a graphical feature. I'm okay with all that. I'd rather have the option of enabling extra graphical features and gimmicks than playing straight up console ports.

 

[james1701]

I tried the demo and got a A without phsx, but when I turned it on high, watching my gpu usage on my G19 it went from 98 down to 12 percent usage on both cards, when it was turned on high. This is with everything maxed out at 19x12. When you turn on phsx, the gpu should still be drawing everything else, so why does gpu usage fall so much. I think the game is bugged.

 

[Sylvanas]

Nvidia have released a PhysX system software update which among other thing includes 'Bug fixes for Mafia 2". I'd give it a go.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

there wont be more than a couple of fps difference between any modern cpus though. I ran it on my cpu and got 16.5 fps myself. the point was its not going to be playable in its standard form on the cpu.

Why are you discouraging hard benchmarks? It's nice to see what a C2D can do compared to a Core i7 regardless of the overall performance.

 

[toyota]

Why are you discouraging hard benchmarks? It's nice to see what a C2D can do compared to a Core i7 regardless of the overall performance.

because its completely irrelevant. a person with any sense at all is not going to run the hardware level physx on their cpu because its too sluggish. i7 or Core 2 doesn't mean squat because they will all be within a 1-3 fps of each other and not playable.

You might want to relax before the members here start thinking your posts are irrelevant.
There is no reason to censor or stifle harmless information.

Anandtech Moderator - Keysplayr

 

[toyota]

thanks but I am perfectly relaxed. I am just saying when it comes to playing the game no one is going to run hardware physx on their cpu. my point to cusideabelincoln is that there is no real difference among any modern cpus trying to run hardware level physx as they will all have basically the same undesirable performance.

 

[Grooveriding]

Nvidia have released a PhysX system software update which among other thing includes 'Bug fixes for Mafia 2". I'd give it a go.

I tried this update, no change, fps is still horrible considering the dated visuals in this game.

 

[evolucion8]

thanks but I am perfectly relaxed. I am just saying when it comes to playing the game no one is going to run hardware physx on their cpu. my point to cusideabelincoln is that there is no real difference among any modern cpus trying to run hardware level physx as they will all have basically the same undesirable performance.

Yep, because PhysX is crippled for the CPU.

 

[Scali]

Yep, because PhysX is crippled for the CPU.

No it's not.

 

[tincart]

No it's not.

Let's say it's "unoptimized" for CPU and call it a day.

 

[Scali]

Let's say it's "unoptimized" for CPU and call it a day.

Unoptimized is not crippled.

 

[Xarick]

It would be a nice option if nvidia would recode phsyx to make it work well on the cpu, but even better on a nvidia gpu. Thus giving nvidia gpus a heads up in physx making them appealing, but still allowing others the option thus making physx easier to adopt.

 

[Homerboy]

It would be a nice option if nvidia would recode phsyx to make it work well on the cpu, but even better on a nvidia gpu. Thus giving nvidia gpus a heads up in physx making them appealing, but still allowing others the option thus making physx easier to adopt.

It would be nice... but it would also be a dumb, and unnecessary business move on their end.

 

[Scali]

It would be a nice option if nvidia would recode phsyx to make it work well on the cpu, but even better on a nvidia gpu. Thus giving nvidia gpus a heads up in physx making them appealing, but still allowing others the option thus making physx easier to adopt.

PhysX already works well on the CPU. Havok, Bullet or whatever other solutions don't do it better at any rate.
Problem with CPU physics is simply that CPUs are an order of magnitude slower than GPUs, literally.

 

[tviceman]

PhysX already works well on the CPU. Havok, Bullet or whatever other solutions don't do it better at any rate.
Problem with CPU physics is simply that CPUs are an order of magnitude slower than GPUs, literally.

The problem is that so many people don't believe that statement to be true. Even when Intel accidentally admitted that a gtx280 is 12x faster at compute functions than their fastest i7 processor, people still think compute-heavy tasks like gpu-oriented physx effects should be just as fast on their core i5 or phenom II x4.

 

[Scali]

The problem is that so many people don't believe that statement to be true. Even when Intel accidentally admitted that a gtx280 is 12x faster at compute functions than their fastest i7 processor, people still think compute-heavy tasks like gpu-oriented physx effects should be just as fast on their core i5 or phenom II x4.

Yup... That was golden... Intel tried to prove that GPUs weren't as fast as people wanted them to believe, but in the process, they admitted that GPUs still had a significant advantage, whoops

Anyway, physics are pretty difficult for people to grasp...
But let me point out how nVidia tends to work...
They try to add three sorts of effects, basically:
1) Particle/debris effects
2) Cloth effects
3) Fluid/smoke effects

Now, think about it, have you ever seen effects 2) and 3) in regular CPU-physics games? Not really, right?
Generally there's just solidbody physics... you know, boxes that bounce around the screen and that sort of thing... There's also some particle/debris effects, and ofcourse the characters act as ragdolls. But that's about it.

nVidia pumps up the debris to a level that the CPU can't reach, with very detailed splintering of glass, wood and that sort of thing (rather than a piece of wood breaking into 3 or 4 pieces at most).
And you rarely see physically correct cloth, fluid and smoke either because that's another thing that CPUs just cannot do in realtime.
So it's a very simple and effective strategy to put the CPU at a disadvantage (without having to resort to crippling code or anything, the poor processing power of a CPU is a weak point that they're exploiting).

Ofcourse you can say "it's just eyecandy, we don't need it", or "PhysX is unfair to the CPU"... but that doesn't mean you'll get that same eyecandy on the CPU, no matter what physics library they use.

 

[Xarick]

The fluid smoke effects are about the only ones I have found worth the hit. Cloth can be good, but in Mafia 2 cloth is just plain dumb. Nobodies suit moves that way. Infact I thought the cloth physx looks better off. I did like the particles, but not on high.. on high it was completely overdone and unrealistic.

Now what about the article where it was discussed that nvidia was using a old code base and if it updated it physx could run faster on the cpu then it does now.

 

[evolucion8]

Yep, I know that moving from x87 to SSE2 or something similar will not yield much faster results, but I haven't seen a single scenario when using PhysX that can use more than one core, Mafia 2 was totally playable when I removed the Cloth folder and chose the APEX Medium settings, and it was only using one core of my 4 cores, so its crippled, the same goes for Batman, Mirror's Edge and GRAW, which only used 1 core when PhysX ran on CPU. And I test it all by myself monitoring the CPU usage and FPS with RivaTuner.

 

[tweakboy]

If you play at 1600x900 it will give much greater FPS , minimum 10 or 15 and max more, and avg 75 or 80 ........ just use 2xAA and 16xAA and high detail in npanel game settings to default or high,,,,,,,,,,,

3fps minimum is not good.... Im churned off by this game if lowest is that low. Avg isnt good either should give out 80fps and higher. take down res get greater much greater performance and just use 2x AA. good luck

 

[Scali]

but I haven't seen a single scenario when using PhysX that can use more than one core

3DMark Vantage.

 

[tincart]

3DMark Vantage.

I haven't played that one yet, how is it?

Any multiplayer?

 

[teneriffa2005]

Have played with 3DMark Vantage - i only can recommend this part

 

[Madcatatlas]

Scalis next post will be:

"he said scenario, not game"