A dual-core performs 50% slower than a quad-core, while a tri-core performs 18% slower than a quad-core.
4A Engine takes full advantage of quad-cores, and – perhaps for the first time – we are witnessing a performance difference between a tri-core and a quad-core CPU. Apart from these problems, 4A Engine performs incredibly well. Both Nvidia and 4A Games are aware of these issues, so let’s hope that they’ll be able to fix them sooner than later. The game also suffers from various flickering issues (that can be easily spotted in both Nvidia and AMD camps).
Quite frankly, Metro: Last Light’s stuttering fest can literally destroy your gaming experience, and can be as annoying as the one spotted in Bioshock: Infinite. It didn’t matter whether we were running the game in Single-GPU or in SLI mode as there was noticeable stuttering in both configurations. Not only that, but Metro: Last Light suffers from some annoying stuttering issues. Therefore, we are convinced that the current SLI profile is not working as good as it should. In other words, there is no reason behind that performance hit. As you may already know, higher resolutions affect the GPU and not the CPU. What really surprised was the fact that our GPU cores were not stressed at all (when we raised our resolution). The moment we raised our resolution at 1440p, we noticed a 12-17fps performance hit. It seems a bit weird that both SLI and Single-GPU modes had the same results, but let’s assume that we were CPU limited.
Metro: Last Light’s benchmark tool resulted with an average of 52fps at 720p (max settings without SSAA and Advanced PhysX) in both SLI and Single-GPU modes. Nvidia needs to update this SLI profile as soon as possible as the SLI scaling is not up to what we’ve been hoping to. Unfortunately though, it seems that this driver has a lot of issues. Nvidia recommends its latest beta driver for Metro: Last Light, a driver that comes with a – supposedly – updated SLI profile for it and is said to be offering a 10% performance boost.
As always, we used an overclocked Q9650 (4.2Ghz) with 4GB RAM, an Nvidia GTX 690, the latest version of the GeForce drivers and Windows 7-64Bit. Metro: Last Light performs better than Metro 2033, even though it is one of the most demanding titles available on the PC.
Well, we are happy to report that 4A Games’ claims are true. According to the developers, the engine has been optimized and the game is said to be running better than its predecessor. Metro: Last Light is the sequel to Metro 2033, and is powered by 4A Games proprietary engine, 4A Engine. We’ve been covering Metro: Last Light’s launch this whole week, and it’s time now for our Performance Analysis.