Manufacturer: Price: $ N/A US Author: Steve Date: 03/22/2010

[ Introduction ]

Metro 2033 has just been released and today we are comparing the performance and visual quality of various settings and hardware configurations. In doing so we hope to try and help gamers determine what kind of settings they can adjust to maximize their performance and what possible hardware upgrades they could make if necessary to improve performance... It is certainly an exciting time right now for gamers with so many great new titles on the market and there are even more to come. The most recently released title is Metro 2033, which was released just last week for the PC and Xbox 360. Although the game is exclusively single player, it is certainly worth looking at as the game-play and story line is the best we have seen in quite some time, not to mention the graphics. Designed by 4A Games and published by THQ, this new title is an action-oriented game with a combination of survival horror, and first-person shooter elements. Based on the novel Metro 2033 by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky, the game features an amazing story line that it plays out incredibly well. The gamer plays their way through Metro 2033 as a character named "Artyom" who was raised within Moscow before the war. The story takes place in post-apocalyptic Moscow metro system, though from time to time the player ventures above ground on certain missions to scavenge for valuables. The enemies that the player encounters range from human renegades to giant mutated rats and even paranormal forces known only as "The Dark Ones". As exciting as the story line is to play out, what makes it even more exciting are the graphics. The game utilizes multi-platform 4A Engine, running on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Microsoft Windows. Something interesting about this engine is that it has been developed by programmers that worked on S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (X-Ray engine) but left the design team before the game was released. They have now resurfaced with Metro 2033, which is based on the “new” 4A Engine game engine. There is some disagreement regarding whether the engine is based on the pre-release X-Ray engine or whether the engine is an original development as claimed by 4A Games. It does appear that this is an entirely new game engine and what we can tell you is that Metro 2033 looks considerably more impressive than even the latest version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The 4A Engine game engine features Nvidia PhysX support, enhanced AI, and a console SDK for Xbox 360. The PC version includes exclusive features such as DirectX 11 support and has been described as "a love letter to PC gamers" because of the developer’s choice "to make the PC version [especially] phenomenal". [ Screen Shots ]

Table of Contents >>> Introduction <<< Testing Methodology Image Quality Comparison DX9 vs. DX10 (GeForce GTX 260) DX9 vs. DX10 (Radeon HD 4870) Dual vs. Quad-Core Performance Quality Preset Performance AA/AF Quality Performance CPU Scaling Performance GPU Performance Conclusion Next Page ->

GamerRO25

Posted on: 03/23/2010 05:40 AM I really like this game and also i like is because it is the only game after Crysis from 2007 really uses latest hardware !! I play the game at 1920x1200 DX11 default AAA in game and i get a avg of 45fps ( in some cases get down to 20fps ) with 2 x 5870 Core i7 4ghz 6gb ram ddr3 Win7 64bit ATI 10.3 drivers. The game looks really good and like i said it needs a lot of gpu power witch is very good because it is the only game after Crysis that nees a powerfull setup. Nice review.

Artem

Posted on: 03/23/2010 05:55 AM i'd said its not "Artyom" but "Artem" and google translator knows im right, not that it matters but it really pises me off when people start adding unneeded letters and mess up my name, curse that bitch that "i" to my family name in my foreign passport

FULMTL

Posted on: 03/23/2010 06:02 AM Does turning off shadows (or lowering shadow filtering quality) while having the other settings on high help the FPS any? Does ambient occlusion work without shadows?

Chris

Posted on: 03/23/2010 07:54 AM I love Artems post. After all that work that is what he comes back with LOL anyway really nice work with that article.

Steve Posts: 80 Joined: 2010-02-08

Posted on: 03/23/2010 08:00 AM Posted by Artem on 03/23/2010 06:55 AM i'd said its not "Artyom" but "Artem" and google translator knows im right, not that it matters but it really pises me off when people start adding unneeded letters and mess up my name, curse that bitch that "i" to my family name in my foreign passport Well then mate you had better e-mail the developer then... http://www.metro2033game.com/au/game_details 4th paragraph down "You are Artyom, born in"...

Reisada

Posted on: 03/23/2010 10:35 PM I just won a lot of respect for this website and for you Steve. In the Bad Company 2 i said if you would do the Metro 2033 guide too, and now here it is amazing website, at my favorites now, really good review. Have you already worked on user.cfg to see if it changes anithing on performance? Thanks again

Dave	Posted on: 03/23/2010 10:13 AM Nice work as always. I have been trying to get more performance out of my system for play this game. I thought it was strange that I saw no improvement when overclocking to 4GHz and beyond Guess I am going to have to pull the trigger on a second Radeon HD 5770 now

offordef

Posted on: 03/23/2010 10:19 AM Thanks Steve, another nice job. According to the developer (who was at the base of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.S X-Ray engine which was single threaded) this engine is highly optimised for multithreading. You proved that Metro is highly limited by the GPU('s) however it would be nice to check it lowres and with some serious crossfire and Fermi power. Think you should consider to update this test once Fermi arrived. These guys had strong support from nVidia and this might be nV's showcase to show Fermi's real power. just my two cents. Anyway, keep up the good work :-)

Steve Posts: 80 Joined: 2010-02-08

Posted on: 03/23/2010 10:40 AM Thanks for the feedback guys. offordef I did test CPU performance with a pair of Radeon HD 5870 graphics cards in Crossfire. Believe me based on what I have seen with this setup there is no way this game requires any serious kind of CPU power. Unless for some reason the section of Metro 2033 that we tested simply does not use the CPU as heavily as other parts, but that seems very unlikely to me. As for your Fermi comments are you trying to extract info from me Just so you know we have run the same benchmark on the Fermi cards and once the NDA is lifted you will be able to check them out.

offordef

Posted on: 03/23/2010 10:52 AM You are right! Too early here in Europe, need more coffee before while reading and only then post comments.

QmA

Posted on: 03/25/2010 12:22 PM Really loving this new pattern of benching individual games. Excellent review! My only disappointment would be that the 4850 in single and CF config is not included in your review. In my opinion it is the still the price/performance king so it should be still be in reviews. Thanks for the effort though..

Donib

Posted on: 03/25/2010 06:40 PM Things i did and it runs great! I lowered the resolution to 1280x1024 with DX 10 and everything very high. I used nhancer and tweakes some stuff. Power to max perfomance, enable dual core support and texture filtering is on high perf. I got E8500 @3,5ghz with 4gb ddr2 and a GTX285. Gonna experiment right now with the options.

Busta

Posted on: 03/26/2010 12:22 AM Very nice article thanks. It is a real shame this game is not more customizable though

DoctorJellybean

Posted on: 03/26/2010 03:21 PM I guess it'll be awhile before I can find the ideal settings for my GeForce 8800GT SLi and Quad Core setup. Game l0oks great!

illpalazzo

Posted on: 03/29/2010 07:53 PM @Steve: did you look at cpu graphs when playing metro? my quad cpu use is 60-65% when nothing happens (just standing in corridor), and 70-75% when fighting (first big fight at the beggining of game, outside area), maybe the problem in your benchmark is ATI gpu, i have q6600@2.4ghz with gtx260, checked disabling cores in corridor arrea (when you wake up in beginning sections), cpu use 60-65%: 4cores: 61fps 3cores: 61fps 2cores: 40-45fps (jumps, not constant) 1core : 30-35fps to give you more data i was playing on: winxp 32bit, drivers 197.13, metro settings: high, 1440x900

Dubs	Posted on: 04/01/2010 08:35 PM Amazing article thanks. It is also a pretty amazing looking game even if its not my style.

vahnn

Posted on: 02/12/2011 12:59 AM I feel the need to step in here on Artem's behalf. I'm currently teaching myself Russian, and in the Russian alphabet, there are two very similar letters: е and ё. Note the two dots hovering over the second character. The first one is pronounced "yeh," like you'd pronounce "yep." The second is pronounced "yo," as in, "Yo, man, what's up?" So the name Артём (written here in Russian) is pronounced, and spelled, in English as Artyom. ("Art-yome," as in "Yo, man." The "p" is basically an "r".) I'm not sure if Artem (pronounced Ar-tem) is a common Russian name or not, but I don't see why not. Maybe that clears things up, maybe not.

vahnn

Posted on: 02/12/2011 01:04 AM Okay, that failed big time, lol. The Russian name Aptem (the "e" here is supposed to have 2 dots above it, as it's a separate letter from a plain "e" with no dots. This letter is pronounced "yo." Also, the "p" is not a p as in English, it's the Russian equivalent to an "r," and is pronounced like ours.) In English, it's spelled Artyom, which is how it sounds when spoken in Russian.

Steve Posts: 80 Joined: 2010-02-08

Posted on: 02/12/2011 10:03 PM Yeah I wouldn’t stress almost no one cares how the character’s name is spelt.