11 - Thief 3

Instead of Deus Ex, from now on we'll be testing our cards using Thief 3. It is based on the same engine but it's much less GPU intensive and playable on more VGA cards than Deus.

The game makes severe use of Pixel Shader 1.1 instructions, the bloom effect and stencil shadows to achieve a wonderful result on your screen.

In the game, you play the part of Master Thief Garrett who is back to rule out any evil forces using his unique stealth abilities. Deadly Shadows shows what stealth gameplay is all about. This game really gives you the feel of sneaking around and holding your breath when stuck in a sticky situation.

Since there is no official benchmark for the game, we'll do our tests using a GPU intensive scene from the tutorial-level which we believe represents the average fps you'll get when playing the game.

In a game such as Thief 3, with a very demanding graphics engine, only high end cards can make it through the consecutive resolution increments without dropping their performance to awful levels. The HIS X700 Pro performed well with the first two resolutions but lacks the power to handle any higher resolution.

Even from the outset, enabling AA and AF is devastating for the card. Its performance drops by 50% and progressively decreases when increasing the resolution, to reach the incredibly low 6fps at 1600x1200.