Manufacturer: Gas Powered Games Price: $ N/A US Author: Steve Date: 02/26/2010

[ Introduction ]

It has been 3 years since the original Supreme Commander game was released, along with our performance analysis of the game. Now with the release of Supreme Commander 2 we are taking a look at how your gaming system might handle this second installment, by testing a huge range of current and past graphics cards... When it was first released Supreme Commander was one of the most demanding RTS (Real-Time Strategy) games ever developed in our opinion. In fact, at the time we had trouble creating a computer that was fast enough to play this game in all its glory. This was a little disappointing and it meant that most could only truly appreciate the game years later, when pricing of the required hardware dropped. Released back in early 2007, the original Supreme Commander was a hit and is still very popular today. However today we are moving on, as Gas Powered Games releases Supreme Commander 2 for the PC and Xbox 360. This new RTS features full cinematic detail, and in doing so, it requires quite a lot of processing power. With all the visual enhancements enabled, Supreme Commander 2 looks stunning, easily making it one of the best looking RTS games of all time. On the other hand, as a result you can expect many computers to struggle playing this game with all the eye candy turned on. This can be quite disappointing for some, because as good as the game play and fun factor of Supreme Commander 2 is, having visual settings set at their maximum really does this game justice. Gas Powered Games has actually been very forth coming with the system specification requirements for Supreme Commander 2. They recommend that users have at least a 3.0GHz dual-core processor such as the Core 2 Duo E6850 or Athlon II X2 245, along with a GeForce 8800 GS or Radeon X1800 graphics card. While none of these specifications are by any means outrageous, they are higher than that of other modern real-time strategy games. Of course developers are often a fair way off target when it comes to system specifications and even their recommended specifications are never enough to really enjoy the game in all its glory. This is where we come in, testing a range of graphics cards to determine which ones will be worth using and which ones wont. Given that we feel all games should be played using maximum in-game quality settings, this is generally what we test with. That said, because Supreme Commander 2 is such a demanding RTS game and so many of you are going to want to play it, we have also included a great deal of testing using the medium quality preset as well. Before we jump into the testing, here is a short summary of the Supreme Commander 2 game. Set 25 years after the events of the original game, Supreme Commander 2 begins with the assassination of the newly elected president of the colonial defense coalition. The CDC members deny involvement, blame each other, and a galactic war ensues! Like the original, this second installment lets the gamer experience brutal battles on a massive scale. It is possible to create enormous customizable armies and experimental war machines that can change the balance of power at any given moment. Players can take the role of one of the three enigmatic commanders, each representing a unique faction with a rich story that brings a new level of emotional connection to the RTS genre.

Table of Contents >>> Introduction <<< Testing Methodology High/Medium Quality Comparison 2560x1600 High Performance 1920x1200 High Performance 1680x1050 High Performance 2560x1600 Medium Performance 1920x1200 Medium Performance 1680x1050 Medium Performance CPU Scaling – Core i7 9xx CPU Architecture Performance CPU Utilization Conclusion Next Page ->

Artem

Posted on: 03/01/2010 07:15 AM cant wait to get my hands on this one, wish this game would have thousands of mods like Total Annihilation did

ProX	Posted on: 03/01/2010 07:21 AM Loved the article thanks. Cannot wait to get this, should get picking up my copy tomorrow.

Gromit

Posted on: 03/01/2010 07:24 AM Nice work on all the testing. Looks like my humble Phenom system with the GeForce GTX 260 will play this very well.

Robyrt

Posted on: 03/01/2010 07:41 PM Thanks for the writeup - but my Core i7-920 / Radeon 4850 system was struggling to get 40 FPS at 1920x1200 in the demo, compared to your 53 FPS. What am I missing?

W

Posted on: 03/01/2010 09:13 PM As stated in the article it is an "average" FPS and you also do not know what scene(s) they are using. I bet you are on a scene that gives you 40FPS and using that instead of the average. I know I had quite low frames with 300 units on my screen using a 5770 1GB. To be honest I would've liked to see a video of the 3 min game play and a minimum/maximum fps. But that would take a bit more time and is slightly an unreasonable request (especially the video part). I haven't done any tests, but memory can be a factor with some gamers since Supreme Commander is such a "huge" game. The test rig in this article has 6GB DDR3. I'm sure many gamers are still stuck with 4GB DDR2/DDR3 or less. Anyways from this article (and the demo) I know my E8400 3.8GHz | 5770 1GB | 8GB DDR2 probably won't be able to play with consistent smooth frames @ 1920 x 1200. However I am quite interested to see the scaling with CPUs in this article.

ProX

Posted on: 03/01/2010 10:59 PM I have the Radeon HD 4830 and I average about 45fps. If I stay zoomed out for 3 minutes this would turn into an average of about 30fps but you don’t play SC2 that way. I am using a Core i5 750 processor overclocked to 4GHz with 4GB of DDR3-1600 memory and the latest Catalyst 10.2 drivers. What are you using?

oFfOrDef

Posted on: 03/02/2010 11:57 AM The original SupCom was well known for only utilizing more then 2 cores when fighting against multiple AI's. Massive battles with up to 8 AI's would kill the fastest Quad Core of the time. It would be interesting to see if this is optimized as well, anyway at first sight it looks good for players without top of the range HW.

Makaveli

Posted on: 03/03/2010 03:47 AM Any word if this game supports dual monitors like the first one???

Steven Walton Posts: 104 Joined: 2010-02-08

Posted on: 03/03/2010 05:56 AM Posted by Makaveli on 03/03/2010 04:47 AM Any word if this game supports dual monitors like the first one??? Yes dual-screens are supported.

Artem

Posted on: 03/05/2010 06:22 PM ............ im disappointed its even worse than original SC, 10 units per side, almost at start you can build experimentals ... must be some kind of joke yes it looks nice, but content sucks, ****s ruined game, turned it into some poor starcraft clone, better go back to moded sc:fa or total annihilation

Mabis Feridin

Posted on: 03/14/2010 05:21 PM @Artem It's really hard to play other RTS games after SupCom. I keep spinning the mousewheel trying to zoom out. If SupCom 2 is Starcraft with strategic zoom then I don't need to buy Starcraft 2.

Raymond

Posted on: 03/08/2010 06:49 PM Supreme Commander Needed a 3rd party program "core maximizer" to use all cores I think Supcomm 2 will as well.

Calle2003 Posts: 16 Joined: 2010-04-27

Posted on: 04/29/2010 10:00 AM Could you do an article with my favourite RTS Dawn of War II as well? Rather old game, but with the new expansion Chaos Rising maybe?

Useable Technology

Posted on: 07/03/2010 05:58 AM f I stay zoomed out for 3 minutes this would turn into an average of about 30fps but you don If SupCom 2 is Starcraft with strategic zoom then I don't need to buy Starcraft 2. wish this game would have thousands of mods like Total Annihilation did Massive battles with up to 8 AI's would kill the fastest Quad Core of the time.