Performance with Skyrim, Far Cry Blood Dragon, Tribes Ascend

[MojoRising]

This is an FYI for the people testing out their Server2012 system for modern gaming.

I installed Server 2012 onto a system using a Phenom II X4 965 BE, Radeon 2GB 7850, 8GB RAM, 6 Gbps SATA hard drive, running the Beta Windows 8 Catalyst driver. I have another similar gaming system to compare running Windows 7 with a Phenom II X4 955 and Radeon 1 GB 6870.

Skyrim runs pretty smooth on the Server system, though it could be a bit better, there is some choppiness in the frame rates, but overall it is playable and similar in performance to the Win7 machine.

FarCry Blood Dragon has some definite performance drop in the Server system. The Win7 machine can run this on max settings with steady frame rates in the 45-60 range. The server system (using both the main Win8 Catalyst and also beta drivers) had an abysmal maxed out settings and running in the 25-35 range, and performed just as horribly in the lowest graphics settings. That was during the opening fight scene. However, the next part of the game with settings on high the Server system could run this game in the 28-45 range, but it was very sporadic and unstable frame rates. Overall without paying attention to FRAPS it was playable, but when you compare it to the very similar Win7 machine there is a NOTICEABLE difference.

Tribes Ascend being a strictly multiplayer game has some trickyness to it deciding what is actually online lag versus frame rates. This seemed to run well on Server2012, but the frame rates were a bit sporadic jumping around the range of 30-50 in small amount of time ,while the win7 system never dipped below 40.

Overall the 3 games were playable on Server2012, but if you want your games to be optimized there will be problems. Think it’s an issue with the AMD Catalyst drivers?

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