Medium Quality Performance

Moving to the medium quality visual settings really hurt the lower end graphics cards and even the Radeon X1950XT struggled to deliver silky smooth gameplay at 1280x1024. Anything slower than the Radeon X1950 Pro was pretty much unplayable at 1280x1024, which was quite disappointing.

The GeForce 8800 GTS (640MB) graphics card was great at 1280x1024 rendering 65.3fps, while 1600x1200 was a little more challenging delivering just 45.9fps. Then at 1920x1200 the average frame rate dipped into the red zone, managing just 37.7fps and while this still meant that the game was playable, at times there was a little bit of lag.

The powerful Radeon HD 2900XT and GeForce 8800 GTX graphics cards on the other hand ripped through Bioshock, rendering an impressive 53fps at 1920x1200. Then at 1600x1200 both graphics cards managed 63fps. So far for the ultimate Bioshock experience it is not all that surprising to learn that you need an ultimate graphics card.

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