Rainbow Six: Vegas: A Performance Analysis
by Josh Venning on December 25, 2006 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Gaming
Final Words
Rainbow Six: Vegas has all the elements of a great tactical shooter, with great graphics and very realistic AI. Your teammates are very handy and can take care of themselves, doing what you tell them while taking cover and engaging hostiles at their own discretion. As with any game AI they aren't perfect and sometimes they die for very stupid reasons, but mostly they are incredibly useful in clearing rooms and getting your missions accomplished. Similarly, the enemy AI is deadly at the "realistic" difficulty setting, and they will actively seek you out and try to flank your team while taking cover and using grenades or flashbangs. Clearing a room full of tangos requires the use of sound tactics, such as suppressing your enemy and sending a team or yourself to flank them while they hide behind cover. This element of realism that we've seen in games like Brothers in Arms is a nice touch and makes the game a lot more fun.
Gameplay aside, the game shows off the new Unreal Engine 3 nicely, and there are a lot of excellent graphical elements to the game. The smoke effect is good when you or an enemy pops a smoke grenade for cover, and the way explosions and gunfire interact with the environment causing damage to things like slot machines and glasses at adds a nice element of chaos to the action. As we've seen though, these graphical elements come at a high price, and Rainbow Six: Vegas is by no means a game for those with a low-end graphics solution.
Our performance tests show that in order to play this game smoothly with the resolution and quality settings at their highest, you will need at least an NVIDIA 8800 GTS (or possibly an overclocked X1950 XTX). The X1950 XTX and 7900 GTX at reference speeds can run the game at these settings without too much trouble, but they still see some choppiness when in a large firefight with a lot of stuff going on. Fortunately, the game still looks and plays well with the resolution and quality settings turned down, so don't despair if you aren't an owner of an 8800 yet and want to get a hold of this game. We still don't recommend playing Rainbow Six: Vegas on a low end card like the 7300 GT, because even at the lowest resolution and settings you will still probably run into choppy gameplay at certain points in the game, and the action can be fast-paced enough that this is a real problem. At this point in time, to really enjoy this game at a decent resolution you will probably want to go with at least a 7600 GT from NVIDIA or better yet an X1650 XT from ATI if you can get your hands on one. GeForce 7900 GS and Radeon X1900 GT are also good options.
Even though Rainbow Six: Vegas uses the Unreal Engine 3, something it shares with Epic's Gears of War for the Xbox360, its graphics don't really compare to Gears, and there are some places where the environments in Vegas could look better. One example is during the helicopter flight over Las Vegas at night. Overall though, Vegas' graphics are very impressive, and they certainly represent a significant improvement compared to other games like another Ubisoft title we may have mentioned a few times.
Hopefully we will see some improvements in performance for Vegas on NVIDIA's hardware soon, because as it stands, the game clearly favors ATI parts, with the obvious exception of the 8800. That is a trend we've seen more of over time, however: G70 series hardware does very well at DX8 graphics, but when more DX9 effects are enabled the pixel shaders on many NVIDIA chips don't seem to do as well as ATI's hardware. We might have liked to see the kind of control over graphics quality in Vegas that we've seen in games like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, especially considering that maximum detail settings result in performance that is often lower than what we saw with Oblivion. Still, kudos to Ubisoft on this nice addition to the Rainbow Six series, and we look forward to further enjoying this game, as well as seeing what else comes along using the Unreal Engine 3 in the near future.
Rainbow Six: Vegas has all the elements of a great tactical shooter, with great graphics and very realistic AI. Your teammates are very handy and can take care of themselves, doing what you tell them while taking cover and engaging hostiles at their own discretion. As with any game AI they aren't perfect and sometimes they die for very stupid reasons, but mostly they are incredibly useful in clearing rooms and getting your missions accomplished. Similarly, the enemy AI is deadly at the "realistic" difficulty setting, and they will actively seek you out and try to flank your team while taking cover and using grenades or flashbangs. Clearing a room full of tangos requires the use of sound tactics, such as suppressing your enemy and sending a team or yourself to flank them while they hide behind cover. This element of realism that we've seen in games like Brothers in Arms is a nice touch and makes the game a lot more fun.
Gameplay aside, the game shows off the new Unreal Engine 3 nicely, and there are a lot of excellent graphical elements to the game. The smoke effect is good when you or an enemy pops a smoke grenade for cover, and the way explosions and gunfire interact with the environment causing damage to things like slot machines and glasses at adds a nice element of chaos to the action. As we've seen though, these graphical elements come at a high price, and Rainbow Six: Vegas is by no means a game for those with a low-end graphics solution.
Our performance tests show that in order to play this game smoothly with the resolution and quality settings at their highest, you will need at least an NVIDIA 8800 GTS (or possibly an overclocked X1950 XTX). The X1950 XTX and 7900 GTX at reference speeds can run the game at these settings without too much trouble, but they still see some choppiness when in a large firefight with a lot of stuff going on. Fortunately, the game still looks and plays well with the resolution and quality settings turned down, so don't despair if you aren't an owner of an 8800 yet and want to get a hold of this game. We still don't recommend playing Rainbow Six: Vegas on a low end card like the 7300 GT, because even at the lowest resolution and settings you will still probably run into choppy gameplay at certain points in the game, and the action can be fast-paced enough that this is a real problem. At this point in time, to really enjoy this game at a decent resolution you will probably want to go with at least a 7600 GT from NVIDIA or better yet an X1650 XT from ATI if you can get your hands on one. GeForce 7900 GS and Radeon X1900 GT are also good options.
Even though Rainbow Six: Vegas uses the Unreal Engine 3, something it shares with Epic's Gears of War for the Xbox360, its graphics don't really compare to Gears, and there are some places where the environments in Vegas could look better. One example is during the helicopter flight over Las Vegas at night. Overall though, Vegas' graphics are very impressive, and they certainly represent a significant improvement compared to other games like another Ubisoft title we may have mentioned a few times.
Hopefully we will see some improvements in performance for Vegas on NVIDIA's hardware soon, because as it stands, the game clearly favors ATI parts, with the obvious exception of the 8800. That is a trend we've seen more of over time, however: G70 series hardware does very well at DX8 graphics, but when more DX9 effects are enabled the pixel shaders on many NVIDIA chips don't seem to do as well as ATI's hardware. We might have liked to see the kind of control over graphics quality in Vegas that we've seen in games like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, especially considering that maximum detail settings result in performance that is often lower than what we saw with Oblivion. Still, kudos to Ubisoft on this nice addition to the Rainbow Six series, and we look forward to further enjoying this game, as well as seeing what else comes along using the Unreal Engine 3 in the near future.
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kreacher - Monday, May 21, 2007 - link
I would love to see an update on this article once the 2600 has been released.SGTLindy - Saturday, December 30, 2006 - link
it runs better on ATI and does not have many graphics options because its a Xbox 360 port!!Runs great on the 360....runs slower on the PC....wow that was tuff to figure out.
Gears of War looks better on the U3 engine because...the GOW team made the U3 engine...if anyone is going to know how to tweak a U3 based game it would be them, especially since the engine just came out.
None of this is rocket science.
Sharky974 - Friday, December 29, 2006 - link
There is a user over at B3D saying his Rainbow Six Vegas box (he also provided a photo) says Unreal engine 2, NOT Unreal engine 3. And his photo backs that up. Apparantly R6 might be a "UE2.5" game.Anand wouldn't be the only site to make that mistake, but you guys might wanna look into it..
bisket - Wednesday, December 27, 2006 - link
exactly, rocky.the heli rides do not tax my system at all. it's during levels that i have the *oh so very annoying* fps random drops to 20 from 60.
i just hope this is not a growing trend in games. enough said. anandtech rocks! ;)
R0CKY - Wednesday, December 27, 2006 - link
Was benchmarking the heli ride in these test really the best way to test Vegas performance? What percentage of the game is actually spent flying in a heli, and is testing the part of the game where the player switches off and doesn't really care what is going on in game the best part of the game to test?I appreciate there was no easy way to benchmark due to there being no in-game system to replay the same scene more than once, but at the end of the day it is the game's performance during firefights and urban scenes that is of interest to the gamer, not level-transition heli rides.
Is it valid to assume that the engines rednering performance is the same for detailed character models as it is for long draw/low detail high altitude scenes?
Rather than settling for an easily reproducible scene of little revelance, personally I'd would have liked to have seen something a bit more relevant tested, even if it took some ingenuity to come up. It is possible to get quite accurate comparisons, for example, by simply recording the FPS as a character runs the same path through a level several times - at least that way we'd get a report showing FPS from scenes the player is interested in, rather than unimportant heli rides.
That comes of like a bit of a rant, but it is meant to be constructive comment, honest!
:o)
mlambert890 - Wednesday, January 10, 2007 - link
Weird, but to be honest, I actually do better in game (even during fire-fights), then in that heli ride. My thinking was that the engine isnt particularly efficient at rendering the wide-open city scape.With an FX-60 o/c to 2.8Ghz and an X1900XTX@650/775 and 2GB PC3200 I get 30-40fps on the heli ride, but I very rarely dip below 45fps in game. A couple of the big fights dropped into the 20's but it didnt really disrupt play that badly. Gameplay for 90% of the game ended up better than the heli ride bench would have implied.
If you're interested, AMDZone did an R6:V bench using an avg of in-game framerates rather than the heli ride:
http://www.amdzone.com/modules.php?op=modload&...">http://www.amdzone.com/modules.php?op=m...q=viewar...
VooDooAddict - Monday, February 19, 2007 - link
thanks for the link to that review. Especially like the Single Core vs Dual Core and Dual Core vs Quad.anandtech02148 - Wednesday, December 27, 2006 - link
Gears of War got excellent lighting n shadows,worst unreal 3 engine game... REd orchestra.
i like the first paragraph of this article, It hit the spot, consider i have downloaded 2Gig of patches for BF2!!!
considered games now break the $100 easily for a title.
bisket - Wednesday, December 27, 2006 - link
i don't see really, how this game can get that much praise.1. first off no widescreen support for pc except with a hack.
2. imo i thought graw look a heck of a lot better then this. i hate ports from consoles to pc they dumb it down too much.
3. i'm running a 8800gtx with a c2d 6600 with 2 gigs of pc6400 ram. and this game game me a good 60 fps (1920x1200 everything maxed with widescreen hack) in some areas. in some areas my fps droped to 20 which is unexceptable and just plain dumb. why? maybe because it's just a port and not optimized, i don't care if it's the unreal 3 engine or not, i'm not impressed.
4. before i bash it too hard, i do have to say that despite it's major flaws the game is fun and could be *tons* better.
5. i took this over to a friends house that has the dell 30" and same setup as me (8800gtx and whatnot) and we could not establish a framerate over 30fps, which is just ridiculous. i do not look forward to future pc games that are ported from a console. i will be saving my money next time.
6. why all the low-res texture nonsense? and low geometry? i just don't get it.
7. also, praise for the smoke? it looks bad (as in, not good), IMHO.
i give this game a 5.5 out of 10.
summary: decent graphics with major glitches and major fps drops in random places. fun gameplay. have fun playing online when it doesn't crash. very cool cover system and nice enemy ai.
100proof - Thursday, December 28, 2006 - link
8.) Ingame advertising ---> spyware..http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/380106502...">http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/380106502...
My question is why don't Review sites like Anandtech hold game publishers like EA and Ubisoft accountable for this new trend of double dipping? Why also aren't publishers held accountable for not having information about spyware on outside of the packaging?
Credit goes to SlipperyJim for info/screencaps below
This shows traffic from when you double click the game icon to when it says "Press any key to begin:
http://www.mods4games.com/images/misc/Vegas1.gif">http://www.mods4games.com/images/misc/Vegas1.gif
Traffic from when you select "Multiplayer > Online":
http://www.mods4games.com/images/misc/Vegas2.gif">http://www.mods4games.com/images/misc/Vegas2.gif
Traffic from when you login with your Username and Password:
http://www.mods4games.com/images/misc/Vegas3.gif">http://www.mods4games.com/images/misc/Vegas3.gif
Traffic when you get a list of games:
http://www.mods4games.com/images/misc/Vegas4.gif">http://www.mods4games.com/images/misc/Vegas4.gif
The interesting locations seems to be "locate.madserver.net" and Demonware.
"madserver.net" is Massive Incorporated server. This is the server for in-game adverts. If you add "locate.madserver.net" to your Windows host file it appears to block the in-game advertising. Below is a link to how it is blocked in Swat 4 (follow the same method but add "locate.madserver.net" to the list):
http://nationalcheeseemporium.org/">http://nationalcheeseemporium.org/
DemonWare is a company that offers matchmaking services (probably just like Gamespy in that they will check your CD key and maintain a master server list of available games). It also is a company that has lobby advertising and also offers something called "DemonWare DNA" which sounds a lot like spyware. Frown
http://www.demonware.net/">http://www.demonware.net/
quote:
The most shocking part was next. The client contacted madserver to tell the advertisers how long the gamer spent with each advert in their view. This is mapped to the gamer id, so they know which player in the game saw the advert, and when, for how long, and from how far away (by virtue of the size attribute). Even the average viewing angle is passed back.