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Mafia II - Public Demo test GPU (updated)

English version

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Year: 2010
Genre:
Action / Racing (Cars) / 3D
developer
2K Czech
Publisher
2K Czech
Release date:
27 August 2010 g.

System requirements for maximum render quality in Mafia II - Public Demo  recommended by game siteGPU:

The minimum

Operating system: Vista®, Windows 7
Processor: Core 2 Duo 3.33 GHz or Phenom II X2 555 
RAM: 2 GB
Video card: DirectX®9 compatible video adapter with 512 MB RAM Radeon HD 5750 or GeForce GT 240
DirectX:
DirectX®9
Winchester:
2 GB free space

Effective

Operating system: Vista®, Windows 7
Processor:
Intel Core 2 Quad 3.0 GHz or Phenom II X4 940
RAM:
2 GB
Video card:
DirectX®9 compatible video adapter with 512 MB RAM Radeon HD 4870 or GeForce GTX 260
Winchester:
2 GB free space

Optimal

Operating system: Vista®, Windows 7
Processor: Intel Core i 7 930 or Phenom II X6 1090T 
RAM: 2 GB 
Video card: DirectX®9 compatible video adapter with 1280 MB RAM  GeForce GTX 470
DirectX:
DirectX®9
Winchester:
2 GB free space

Official description of the game

Description: “Mafia” is immortal: the long-awaited continuation of the famous gangster saga from the creators of the original game - a new immersion in a merciless and intriguing world that promises many thrills. Mafia II was created on a specially developed graphics engine, which allowed the authors of the project to realize all the wildest ideas and say a new word in the genre, the canons of which were defined by the first “Mafia”. Classic elements - shootouts, fights, moving around the city on various types of transport - have acquired an unprecedented scale, and the game world has become truly limitless. The main character of the new story is Vito, the son of an Italian immigrant, who grew up in poverty and lawlessness. From childhood, he learned that the mafia is the only path to wealth and respect for a person of his position, and, not wanting to drag out a miserable existence full of hardships, like his father’s, he decided to become a gangster. The criminal career of Vito and his sidekick Joe begins with petty thefts and car thefts, but quite quickly they rise to higher levels of the criminal ladder. This is where it turns out that the real life of tough guys is not as cloudless as it seemed in boyish dreams.

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Features:
• Be a gangster. Vivid, authentic images, a strong plot and its excellent presentation - all this will allow you to feel the drama and unpredictability of the relationship between mafia clans and those who belong to them.
• Forget peace. Thrilling car chases, brutal brawls and frantic shootouts combine to provide rich and varied gameplay.
• Live in a metropolis. Thanks to the latest Illusion Engine™ graphics engine, players can explore a huge world without wasting time waiting for the next download: stroll through the picturesque streets of the city of Empire Bay, which covers an area of ​​more than 25 square kilometers, or go inside the buildings and admire the detailed interiors.
• Get to know America. Cars, advertising, clothing - all the signs of American life in the 1940s and 50s, recreated with maximum accuracy, change over time in the game in accordance with historical realities.
• Listen to classics. A selection of the best musical compositions of the mid-20th century will help you fully immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the American golden age.

Review: Playability

The demo version of the game was released on August 10, 2010. The game was positioned as a high-tech product, so the release of a demo version, especially on PC, will allow many players to actually test their hardware. The demo version features a single level, "Buzzsaw", in which the protagonist Vito and his accomplices Joe and Henry are required to kill a mafioso known under the pseudonym "Fat Man". The demo version contains a number of restrictions: the simultaneous duration of the game is no more than 10 minutes, many streets of the game city are closed. The settings have two car control modes: simulator and normal.

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The game takes place between 1945 and 1955 in the fictional city of Empire Bay (the name is a reference to the nickname of New York State). The city is based on San Francisco and New York, with obvious influences from Chicago and Detroit. The area of ​​the game world map will be about 25,9 square kilometers (10 square miles), which is approximately 3 times smaller than the game world of Grand Theft Auto IV. The game also contains approximately 50 vehicles, and licensed music from the era, which turns out to be not as bad as previously thought.

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The game world presented in the demo was not as impressive as expected. Most of the disappointment concerns the simulation of city life. The diversity of the townspeople and their behavior in the world around them is quite real, but as soon as our character enters into various types of “contacts” with them, the surface finish of the game AI becomes visible. But as previously disseminated in various publications, Mafia II does not claim to be the “king of the open world” - all its splendor lies in the plot and the missions performed, where you can fully enjoy the game.

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Let's return to the game world again - you won't be destined to indulge in much rowdy behavior and robbery. Vigilant police are watching your every move, and every minor offense will be suppressed. And our main character can be said to be an angel, who, even when stealing a car, politely asks the driver to hand over control to him, unlike the same Niko in Grand Theft Auto IV, who, with obscenities in addition, gives the poor driver a whole bunch of punches. The dissatisfaction of many players can also be caused by the uncomfortable handling of vehicles. We are even scared to imagine how poor Americans suffered behind the wheel of a car in the mid-50s of the last century...

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We invite you to evaluate the cutting of various game moments in Mafia II - Public Demo , where you can see for yourself the quality of this product:

Well, despite the few inherent shortcomings of Mafia II, the Czechs have turned out to be a completely excellent and high-quality product, which will be quite interesting to play for both open-world fans and fans of linear shooters. It remains to wait for the release of the full version in order to draw more specific conclusions...

Review: Game Graphics

Mafia II is based on the Illusion Engine, which was developed by 2K Czech for internal use. The graphics part of the engine supports raised textures, complex dynamic lighting and shadows, various post-processing effects (such as depth of field), and shader effects. The image output should in theory be done using DirectX 10, but the background color of the Fraps counter remained transparent, which led to the conclusion that it was missing.

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“PhysX” is integrated as a physics engine, the delights of which can be enjoyed by all owners of powerful central processors and Nvidia video cards. The graphical menu displays three levels of APEX implementation: without it, medium quality and high quality. For those who are not in the know, we can explain: at the Game Developers Conference in 2009 in California, company representatives invited to love and favor the new name PhysX: APEX.

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In short, APEX brings new capabilities to the NVIDIA PhysX SDK, giving artists, level designers and developers a set of easy-to-use utilities. Innovations will make it possible to streamline the process of using realistic physics for future gaming titles on many platforms.

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So, realistic physics gives us a larger number of particles, improved damage to surfaces, more realistic in-game clothing for characters and volumetric smoke. In combination with a good graphics engine, the picture in the game turned out to be simply magnificent. In the next section we will try to determine how much this magnificence will cost the end user...

Review: Resource-intensive game

So, for a comfortable game in Mafia II - Public Demo  you will need a level processor Intel Quad Core 2 3.0 GHz or Phenom II X4 940 and a RAM capacity of 2 gigabytes.

Hardware configuration

Processors

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550@ 4.25 GHz cache L2 12 MB

Intel® Core™ i7-930@4.2 GHz cache L3 8 MB

Intel® Core™ i7-860@4.2 GHz cache L3 8 MB

motherboards

MSI P45 Platinum 7512 socket LGA775

MSI X58 Pro socket LGA1366 product provided by the company MSI

MSI P55-GD55 socket LGA1156 product provided by the company MSI

Memory

GOODRAM PLAY 1600MHz (8-8-8-24) product provided by the company GOODRAM

GOODRAM Pro 2000MHz (8-8-8-29) product provided by the company GOODRAM 

Video Cards

GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB
GeForce 8800 GS 386 MB
GeForce 8800 GT 512 MB
GeForce 8800 GTS 512 MB
GeForce 8800 GTX 768 MB
GeForce 9600 GSO 768 MB
GeForce 9600 GSO (G94) 512 MB
GeForce 9600 GT 512 MB
GeForce 9800 GT 512 MB
GeForce 9800 GTX 512 MB
GeForce GT 220 1024 MB
GeForce GTS 250 1024 MB
GeForce GTX 260 896 MB
GeForce GTX 260 core 216
GeForce GTX 280 1024 MB
GeForce GTX 275 896 MB
GeForce GTX 285 1024 MB
GeForce GTX 460 768 MB
GeForce GTX 460 1024 MB
GeForce GTX 465 1024 MB
Zotac GeForce GTX 470 1280 MB 
product provided by the company Zotac
Zotac GeForce GTX 480 1536 MB
product provided by the company Zotac
Radeon HD 2900 GT 512 MB
Radeon HD 2900 PRO 512 MB
Radeon HD 2900 XT 1024 MB
Radeon HD 3690 512 MB
Radeon HD 3850 512 MB
Radeon HD 3870 512 MB
Radeon HD 4450 512 MB
Radeon HD 4470 512 MB
Radeon HD 4550 512 MB
Radeon HD 4650 512 MB
Radeon HD 4670 512 MB
Radeon HD 4750 512 MB
Radeon HD 4770 512 MB
Radeon HD 4830 512 MB
Radeon HD 4850 1024 MB
MSI Radeon HD 4870 512 MB product provided by the company MSI
Radeon HD 4890 1024 MB
Radeon HD 5670 1024 MB
Radeon HD 5750 1024 MB
MSI Radeon HD 5770 HAWK 1024 MB
product provided by the company MSI
Radeon HD 5830 1024 MB
Radeon HD 5850 1024 MB
Radeon HD 5870 1024 MB

Hard disks

3x2 RAID0 Western Digital Caivar WD2500GL 250 GB, 7200 rpm, SATA 3 Gbit/s

Power Supplies

FSP GROUP EVEREST 800W

2xSeaSonic S12D 850 Silver 850W product provided by the company SeaSonic

System software and drivers 

Operating system

Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Edition x64

DirectX

DirectX 11

Platform Driver

Intel INF Chipset Update Utility 9.1.0.1012

Graphics driver

Nvidia GeForce/ION Driver Release 258.96

ATI Catalyst 10.7

 Tests were carried out on an internal gaming benchmark. The average FPS was taken from the results, and the minimum from personal observations. Frame counter in Mafia II - Public Demo turned out to be so sensitive that it recorded frames in hundredths of a second and could produce very low minimum values, which is why I had to resort to this procedure...

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Our video cards this time, due to the variety of tests, were run only in separate screen resolutions of 1280x1024 and 1920x1080 with different APEX quality settings. All video cards were tested at maximum graphic quality settings.  to avoid the effect of desktop darkening on Radeon video cards, we recommend that users do this before launching the game on Windows Vista and Windows 7 translate it into a simplified style. Nvidia places restrictions on the use of PhysX technology on systems that have Radeon cards installed, so owners of the latter will not be able to install a second video adapter as a physics accelerator until the next one is released PhysX mod.

Testing at maximum quality settings 1280x1024 APEX off

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So, APEX is disabled and cards from different manufacturers can compete, so to speak, on an equal footing. Nvidia cards are slightly ahead of their rivals. For this resolution, computer players will need cards of the Radeon HD 5750 or GeForce GT 240 level, which is quite consistent with the quality of the resulting graphics.

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080 APEX off

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When the resolution is increased, again with APEX disabled, the gaming appetite increases to the level of Radeon HD 4870 or GeForce 8800 GTX video cards.

Testing at maximum quality settings 1280x1024 APEX middle

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Turning APEX to medium makes the picture look a little nicer and makes playing a lot more fun. Radeon cards were limited by the performance of the central processor, which was responsible for physics acceleration, and were unable to cross the frame rate limit of 30 FPS. But ATI card holders should not despair. Radeon HD 4870 will show performance comparable in terms of minimum FPS with GeForce GTX 280 which independently has a very difficult time processing both physics and graphics, although in terms of average frame rate it is significantly ahead. So, if you have a modern and very overclocked Core I 7, then having video cards of a level lower than GeForce GTX 275 it makes no sense to put physics acceleration on the video accelerator.

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080 APEX middle

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When switching to a resolution of 1920x1080, Nvidia is increasingly losing its position in ensuring a comfortable minimum FPS, and enabling physics on video cards below the level becomes pointless. GeForce  GTX 465. So it’s not just the owners of ATI cards who are left out in this game...

Testing at maximum quality settings 1280x1024 APEX high

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We go further and set APEX quality to the maximum level. In this case, our overclocked processor will allow us to reach the milestone of a measly 16 frames... Radeon video cards in this case, like any processors, become unsuitable for smooth gameplay. But don’t worry, even the effects that you see at the average APEX quality level will be enough for you. So, in this mode at a resolution of 1280x1024, the only thing that can help you deliver a comfortable and lag-free FPS is GeForce GTX 465 ...

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080 APEX high 

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And finally, for a high-quality game at maximum settings, you should stock up on at least GeForce GTX 470. Next, we will try to determine which auxiliary video card should be installed as a physics accelerator to offload the video load from the main video accelerator...

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080 APEX high+ Nvidia PhysX GeForce Card

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 After feedback from our users and installation of NVIDIA PhysX 9.10.0513, we decided to slightly revise the test using a second video accelerator as a physical accelerator. So, with the release of the new driver, the processing of physical calculations by the second video card has increased, even somewhat significantly. It’s immediately obvious that Nvidia is playing tricks: on the Core 2 Quad 9550, on the Core I 3 560, and on the Core i7-930, in the test at maximum APEX all settings, the processors showed identical results and did not exceed the FPS threshold of 17 frames. At the request of our readers, we included the GeForce 8600 GT in the test, which showed twice the performance of the Intel Core i7-930@4.2 GHz. Although in the same processor test in 3DMark Vantage, which, by the way, also uses PhysX, the Core i7 is almost 8600 times ahead of its opponent, the GeForce 2 GT. When running a test on a Core i7-930 in Mafia II - Public Demo  it was loaded by no more than 30-40%. It turns out that Nvidia deliberately slowed down the processing of physics by central processors in order to push forward its video cards, although according to its own statements, NVIDIA PhysX is capable of fully loading up to 12 CPU cores... And probably for this reason, problems with improving physics on NVIDIA video cards arose, as a result of which it had to quickly correct its errors in the new driver for PhysX 9.10.0513.

Well, let's not talk about sad things and move on - the cheapest and best option for accelerating physics is to use a GeForce video adapter GT 240, which will show greater performance than a single  GeForce GTX 480. We tried to use the advice of our readers PhysX mod 1.04 on Radeon cards, but, unfortunately, nothing worked out for us, since the outcome of this process greatly depends on your persistence and luck...

We want to warn you - steam installs Nvidia PhysX incorrectly, as a result of which the processor starts calculating physics instead of the video card and the FPS is very shocking for users of top video cards. To avoid this absurdity, go to the folder where steam installs Mafia II - Public Demo  and install Nvidia PhysX version 10 manually. What kind of absurdity can then happen with the tests, you can see in this article, although the authors are completely confident that they are right, equating the GeForce GTX 470 with the GeForce 9600 GT in terms of performance.

Final World:Mafia II - Public Demo caused a lot of positive emotions and we hope with the release of the full version we will be able to confirm this. In the meantime, everyone will be able to download the demo version of this product with their own hands and find out at what settings they can play comfortably.

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