Rainbow Six: Vegas: A Performance Analysis

Introduction

We recently looked at performance with Ubisoft's Splinter Cell: Double Agent and saw that although the game has some enjoyable gameplay elements, there were some technical problems at its release that couldn't be overlooked. When a consumer brings home a game for their PC that they've paid for with their hard-earned money, they should be able to enjoy that game without having to deal with things like crashing and incompatibility issues. Granted, it's not as easy to buy, setup and play a game for the PC as it is for a console system, and some would cite this as an incentive to go with a console gaming system instead of a PC. We feel however, that PCs have just as much if not more potential than consoles for providing incredible gaming experiences.

Of course, there is still the issue of hardware, and the fact is that good hardware is required to enjoy the best PC gaming has to offer. We've talked about Splinter Cell: Double agent, and today we are looking at another game by Ubisoft; the newly released Rainbow Six: Vegas (RSV). We'll be talking a little about the game and how it performs, and we're especially interested in it because it's one of the first games out now based on Unreal Engine 3.

Thankfully with Rainbow Six: Vegas, we found we didn't run into nearly as many of the problems and annoyances we did with Double Agent, and for the most part the game seems like a much more solid port of the Xbox 360 version, if this is in fact the case. It isn't perfect, however, and there are some issues that still should have been fixed before the game's release, but we'll talk about these later on.

Testing performance with Rainbow Six: Vegas was a little more straightforward than we saw with Splinter Cell: Double Agent, but we've tested the game on the same range of cards and we now have a good idea of the type of performance you can expect for this game. While it does break ground somewhat on the graphics engine front (being based on the Unreal Engine 3), it doesn't really do the same for GPU performance requirements (as with Oblivion), which is good news for those looking to buy Rainbow Six: Vegas. However, it can still tax most GPUs out there at higher resolutions and quality settings, and you will most likely need at least a mainstream graphics solution to enjoy the game. We'll give you the details on all this in the performance section.

Overall we were impressed with what we've seen in this latest addition to the Rainbow Six series, and we're sure many fans - as well as those not so familiar with the Rainbow Six series - will enjoy it. The overall graphical quality of the game is excellent, and puts games based on the older Unreal Engine 2 (like Splinter Cell: Double Agent) to shame. We enjoyed playing and testing Rainbow Six: Vegas, so without further ado, let's take a look at the game and our benchmark.