Serious Sam 2 (2005) - retro test GPU

BASIC GAME INFORMATION

 

Year of construction: 2005
Genre: Action, FPS
developer: Croteam
Publisher: 1C-SoftClub 

Serious Sam 2 is a continuation of the furious action game from Croteam, developed using a new “engine” and modern graphics technologies. In addition to stunning image quality and stunning special effects, Serious Sam 2 features a number of gameplay innovations, including motorcycles and jeeps that can be used to move around the levels. The main idea of ​​the game has remained virtually unchanged, so get ready for a continuation of the bloody meat grinder with legions of alien invaders.

Guns are cooler! The enemies are scarier!! More adrenaline!!! Don't let Sam Stone stop! Get down to business seriously! Continue the fight against the hordes of minions of Mental, the largest, most mysterious and evil guy in the Universe! 

THE GRAFICAL PART

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.

Supported OS and graphics API

Serious Sam 2 is supported by major operating systems Windows, which includes Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. Other operating systems are not currently supported by developers and will not be supported. 

 

The priority and main graphics API for Serious Sam 2 is DirectX 9. 

Game engine

Serious Sam 2 is based on Serious Engine 2. Brief history: Croteam, realizing that they had created a masterpiece series, began developing a new engine. They didn't want to completely rewrite the engine, but eventually came to the decision to write the engine from scratch. Perhaps this was a huge mistake and as a result the engine was not as commercially successful as its predecessor. Serious Engine 2 also did not become competitive among engines of its generation, such as Source, idTech 4 and Unreal Engine 2.5. Many technologies implemented in the engine were either outdated or already used in more advanced engines.

Serious Engine 2 implemented HDR - a technology that at the time of 2005 was implemented and used in all engines. Also, support for DirectX 9 was implemented, which used shaders of the second generation 2.0.

Other features of the graphics engine include the implementation of sun flares, as well as MIP-texturing - this effect is used for better rendering of the level, so one high-resolution texture is taken and then small copies are created down to the pixel - all this is created in order to to avoid blurring of textures at high screen resolution, and to avoid the appearance of extra pixels and loss of fine details if the texture expansion is too high. It turns out that it is better to have several textures of different detail and apply the one that is most suitable in a given situation to the object.

The engine has technology for refraction of light in water space, but all refractions are static and are not calculated in real time.

The changes also affected the artificial intelligence system. The sound engine uses several systems and audio file formats. A constant feature since the first version of the engine could be called amazing optimization. Thanks to this, a fairly large number of objects could appear on the player’s screen.

 

The engine, as mentioned above, was not a commercial success and was not licensed by any of the development companies. Croteam also did not release any more games on it. The only game developed on Serious Engine 2 is Serious Sam 2, which was received rather lukewarmly by gamers. 

 

Included with the game Serious Sam 2 is a new game editor, Serious Editor 2.0, which uses built-in capabilities to manipulate all game resources in one program. The program has a built-in GUI driver, editors for polygons, animation, collisions, destruction; the destructibility of objects, the world, models, scripts, particle systems is regulated, as well as a resource editor (allows you to change the appearance of menus and other elements). 

Advanced Game Settings

Serious Sam 2 has both basic and advanced graphic settings. There are four quality levels available for all types of settings: ultra, high, medium and low. You can also flexibly manipulate individual settings. 

 

Below we have provided screenshots of the game at various graphics settings, where our readers can see the difference between the minimum, medium and maximum graphics quality settings. 

Various quality modes

The difference in graphics at different quality settings is quite significant.

Comparison of FullHD and 4K

In 4K Serious Sam 2 looks good, showing impressive graphics even by modern standards.

Comparison of anti-aliasing modes

Anti-aliasing in Serious Sam 2 completely eliminates all surface irregularities, making the picture almost perfect.

General visual design and game physics

Well, we got to Serious Sam 2, which at one time sank into the hearts of many users not only for its excellent graphics, but also for the incredible dynamics of what was happening.

Unlike other games in the series, the visual component in Serious Sam 2 is made in a cartoon style, which caused a lot of criticism from critics, but in our opinion, this makes the game more attractive and driving.

As for the system requirements, the game could at one time bring all the top graphics solutions to their knees without batting an eyelid. As for today, as we will see from further testing, any modern gamer will be able to enjoy this game at maximum settings without problems.

  

Next, we will move directly to gaming tests and determine what impact this game has on modern computer hardware. 

TEST PART

Test GPU

All video cards were tested at maximum graphics quality using MSI Afterburner. The purpose of the test is to determine how video cards from different manufacturers behave under the same conditions. The average and minimum FPS were taken as performance indicators. Below is a video of the test segment:   

Our video cards were tested at separate screen resolutions of 1920x1080, 2560x1600 and 3840x2160 at maximum graphics quality settings allowed by Serious Sam 2. SLI and AMD CrossFireX are sufficiently supported by the game, showing excellent scalability. 

Testing at resolution 1920x1080

      

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080 

  

With these settings An acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the Radeon HD 6850 or GeForce GTX 650 Ti level.

Testing at 2560x1600 resolution

  

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560x1600

 

With these settings An acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the Radeon HD 6850 or GeForce GTX 650 Ti level.

Testing at resolution 3840x2160

 

Testing at maximum quality settings 3840x2560

 

With these settings An acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the Radeon R7 260X or GeForce GTX 760 level. The optimal solutions will be Radeon HD 7850 or GeForce GTX 680 and higher.

As you can see from the review, AMD graphics cards showed the highest performance in the game Serious Sam 2, and the higher the resolution, the better they feel.

Testing of video memory consumed by the game was carried out by the program MSI Afterburner. The indicator was based on results on top video cards from AMD and NVIDIA with separate screen sizes 1920x1080 and 2560x1600 with different anti-aliasing settings.

Testing at maximum memory quality settings GPU

 

The recommended amount of video memory usage for a resolution of 1920x1080 will be 512 MB of video memory, for a resolution of 2560x1600 - 1024 MB of video memory and for a resolution of 3840x2160 about 1280 MB of video memory. 

Micro-Stuttering Test

Introducing our testing of FPS output latency on a Micro-Stuttering monitor. The indicator was based on the results on multi-chip configurations of video cards from AMD and NVIDIA at a resolution of 1920x1080 with maximum image quality settings.

Testing at maximum Micro-Stuttering quality settings GPU 

 

Micro-Stuttering latency indicators for video cards are within normal limits.

CPU test

    

We tested processor dependence on 15 models of basic configurations that are relevant today. The test was carried out in those places where the video card value for the game is minimal and its load was less than 99%, this time at a resolution of 1920x1080 with maximum graphics quality settings. Below is a video of the test segment: 

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080 

 

At the moment, the CPU performance in the game is quite sufficient for a comfortable game.

Loading of processor coresat maximum quality settings 1920x1080 Intel% 

 

Loading of processor cores at maximum quality settings 1920x1080 AMD% 

 

Serious Sam 2 is currently capable of supporting up to 2 computing threads.

RAM test

The test was carried out on the basic configuration of Core i 7 3970X@4.9 GHz with 16GB DDR3 2400 MGz pre-installed memory. The entire used operational memory was taken as an indicator. The RAM test on the entire system was carried out on various test benches without launching third-party applications (browsers, etc.).

Testing the game's RAM consumption at various quality settings 

 

As we can see, with various quality settings, the amount of RAM consumed in Serious Sam 2 is at the level of 150-300 megabytes.  

Testing system RAM consumption  

 

If you have a 4GB system, Serious Sam 2 consumes about 2GB of RAM. In the presence of a system with 8 gigabytes, the RAM consumption of all RAM was 2.2 gigabytes. With a 16 GB system, the total memory consumption was almost 2.8 GB.