Saints Row: The Third APU test

Year: 2011
Genre: Action, racing
Developer: Volition
Publisher: THQ
Publisher in Russia: Akella

Saints Row: The Third is a computer game, non-linear third-person shooter, developed by Volition, Inc. The game was released on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. On November 3, a free character generator called “Initiation Station” appeared on the Steam network, which allows you to create your alter ego and post it for public viewing by the official community, and subsequently use it in the game.

 The game was released on November 15, 2011 in the United States and the European zone.

This subsection of our review highlights the main graphical aspects of this game. Particular attention is paid to the version of the graphics engine used, the version of the API used, graphic settings and the quality of development of the main visual aspects.

Saints Row: The Third is supported by major operating systems Windows, which includes Windows XP/ Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8/10. Other operating systems are not currently supported by developers and will not be supported. 

The priority and main graphics API for Saints Row: The Third is DirectX 11.

The game is based on the game engine "Geo Mod 2.5", which is a multi-platform game engine capable of running on IBM PC-compatible computers running the Microsoft operating system. Windows and Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game consoles. "Geo Mod" is also a multi-threaded engine, the minimum number of threads is two, so it is not able to work on single-threaded systems.

These two most important threads are graphics and physics processing. However, when using a PC, increasing the number of computing threads available in the system will not lead to a noticeable improvement in performance. In the case of consoles, additional optimizations have been made to maximize the use of all available resources, including additional threads.

All versions of the graphics engine support many common graphic effects and technologies: High Dynamic Range Rendering, soft shadows, Depth of Field, Motion Blur, volume rays, light refraction effects for heat and camouflage, as well as many other effects. The particle system allows you to create smoke, dust, fire flames and small fragments. The PC version of the graphics engine supports SLI and CrossFire technologies.

The difference between AMD and Intel solutions is almost invisible.

Testing at low quality settings 1280x720

This time Intel is much faster than AMD...

Testing of video memory consumed by the game was carried out by the program MSI Afterburner. The indicator was based on results on systems  Core i 7 5775С and AMD A10-7870K for separate screen displays 1920x1080 with high quality settings.

Testing at low memory quality settings GPU 

At a resolution of 1280x720, APU video memory consumption is 500 MB of video memory. 

Loading of processor cores at low quality settings 1280x720 % 

When using built-in graphics solutions, the game can support up to 8 computing threads. 

The test was carried out on the basic configurations of Core i 7 5775C and AMD A10-7870K with 8 GB DDR3/4 2666 MGz pre-installed memory. The RAM test on the entire system was carried out without launching third-party applications (browsers, etc.).

Testing system RAM consumption 

If there is a system with Core i 7 5775C game consumes 2 gigabytes of RAM. If there is a system based AMD A10-7870K RAM consumption of all RAM was also 2 gigabytes.