Legit Reviews

Early Tuesday morning 2k Games released a demo of their much anticipated 3rd person action shooter Mafia II. This demo really was interesting to us because it had a built-in benchmark that we could use to quickly and easily use to compare different settings and video cards. Read on to see how a GeForce GTX 460 1GB graphics card performs at various settings!



Article Title: 2K Games' Mafia II Demo Performance w/ a GeForce GTX 460
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1386/1/

Hey Apo, is this a DX-10 game (looks like DX-9)
But the Physx look fun, I imagine the Youtube video is with Physx max'ed out.

I played through it last night. The controls felt terrible, I could not get the mouse sensitivity right, and the brakes while driving was god awful. The shoot outs were nicely punishing; I like that you cant just run around spraying bullets. The graphics were not as good as I was expecting; but then I didnt have Physx on. Seems like a GTA clone set in a time thats just not that interesting to me.

I ran into a rather odd Physx problem last night too. I went to play Mass Effect 2, through Steam, and it wouldnt start giving an error message saying I have to update physx system software. So I got it off Nvidias site, installed, and the problem remained. Then I removed the Mafia II demo, and it works again. So I dont wtf is going on there.

They released it broken as hell ( http://forums.legitreviews.com/about29185.html ) ..once I got more than 10fps the controls were spot on.. but yea, the car driving is challenging..Just think of how people back then had to drive them. No power steering and what not.

jnanster wrote:Hey Apo, is this a DX-10 game (looks like DX-9)

You're right it is DX-9, at least thats what fraps says.
I just let i run on my rig 1920*1080 all max and i got 86 fps on average with AA enabled, physics disabled.

my stock 5770 got 45fps average @1440x900 with highest possible ingame + CCC settings (minus physX of course); very playable for this type of game

(Phenom II @ 3.8GHz)


wish the demo was a bit longer tho

1920x1200 High PhysX = Avg- 45.7 fps max - 166.7 fps

Medium Physx = Avg -44.6 fps, max -166.7 fps. ...................Not bad.. too bad SLI didn't do much. I turned it off and saw maybe 4-5 fps lower and that's it. Only a demo so hopefully the retail is alot more optimized than this.

hmm, considering plugging in my GT240 to run as physX dedicated.. too bad getting it to work is difficult at best

InspectahACE wrote:1920x1200 High PhysX = Avg- 45.7 fps max - 166.7 fps

Medium Physx = Avg -44.6 fps, max -166.7 fps. ...................Not bad.. too bad SLI didn't do much. I turned it off and saw maybe 4-5 fps lower and that's it. Only a demo so hopefully the retail is alot more optimized than this.

Did you try it with the updated 258.96 beta drivers? (weird that nvidia named it the same as the WHQL that is currently out)

crowTrobot wrote:

InspectahACE wrote:1920x1200 High PhysX = Avg- 45.7 fps max - 166.7 fps

Medium Physx = Avg -44.6 fps, max -166.7 fps. ...................Not bad.. too bad SLI didn't do much. I turned it off and saw maybe 4-5 fps lower and that's it. Only a demo so hopefully the retail is alot more optimized than this.

Did you try it with the updated 258.96 beta drivers? (weird that nvidia named it the same as the WHQL that is currently out)

Yup. I rarely ever run behind on drivers unless there's a bug

Once the Physx start flying my computer runs the game like poo. It also seems like a mod more than a sequel. I played the original to death and from what I could tell the map and landmarks are pretty much the same. Just now they look like they're skinned in a higher resolution texture pack. Either way the game could be good, I guess only time will tell.

Side note: Since my computer is running like crap with Physx on would I be better off throwing my 8800 GTS 320MB card in my computer and running it as a dedicated Physx card? I don't care about the detail and pushing the Physx setting but will it help with the minimum framerates?

Major_A wrote:Side note: Since my computer is running like crap with Physx on would I be better off throwing my 8800 GTS 320MB card in my computer and running it as a dedicated Physx card? I don't care about the detail and pushing the Physx setting but will it help with the minimum framerates?

It seems a dedicated Physx card doesn't do that much for the performance, at least not in the demo.
Here are some benchmark results from computerbase.de, where they put a GTX 260 as dedicated Physx aside a GTX 480.

1920x1080 1xAA/16xAF PhysX High

Average -FPS:
GeForce GTX 480 + GTX 260 43,9
GeForce GTX 480 41,8
GeForce GTX 470 37,7
GeForce GTX 460 1GB 34,5
GeForce GTX 460 33,6
GeForce GTX 260 28,7
GeForce GTX 480 (CPU-PhysX) 14,2

Minimum-FPS:
GeForce GTX 480 + GTX 260 20,0
GeForce GTX 480 19,0
GeForce GTX 470 19,0
GeForce GTX 460 1GB 19,0
GeForce GTX 460 19,0
GeForce GTX 260 19,0
GeForce GTX 480 (CPU-PhysX) 8,0

with a 5770 and GTS 250 physX with all highest settings (aside from 1440x900) i get 33fps avg

yeah, just remember this is a demo and 2KGames will not respond to my performance questions... great company to try and work with.

InspectahACE wrote:

crowTrobot wrote:

InspectahACE wrote:1920x1200 High PhysX = Avg- 45.7 fps max - 166.7 fps

Medium Physx = Avg -44.6 fps, max -166.7 fps. ...................Not bad.. too bad SLI didn't do much. I turned it off and saw maybe 4-5 fps lower and that's it. Only a demo so hopefully the retail is alot more optimized than this.

Did you try it with the updated 258.96 beta drivers? (weird that nvidia named it the same as the WHQL that is currently out)

Yup. I rarely ever run behind on drivers unless there's a bug

hopefully they fix it as well as the minimal physx boost with dedicated. I haven't tested with SLI but tried with a dedicated and it barely helped compared to other physX accelerated games.