Oil Rush – PC performance graphics benchmarks of Graphics Cards

 

Year of construction: 2012
Genre: Strategy (Real-time) / 3D
developer: Unigine Corporation
Publishing house: Iceberg Interactive

The game takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where battles for oil are taking place. The player needs to control his platforms, upgrade them, build up forces, use the fleet and aircraft to capture enemy platforms and oil installations. Oil is the main resource of the game. It is used to purchase defensive towers and fund scientific research. Oil installations cannot protect themselves. Establishing control over them is a critical (and difficult) task. The platforms are designed for the production of combat units.

They can be equipped with defensive towers to repel enemy attacks. Platforms can somehow influence nearby units. The units themselves come in different types: planes, ships and submarines. Scientific research will allow the player to produce more advanced defensive weapons and more powerful offensive weapons, including nuclear weapons.

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 Review: Playability 

Well, after a long period of time since the release of the most popular benchmark Unigine Heaven, our compatriots have finally released the long-awaited real-time strategy called Oil Rush. By and large, it is up to the players themselves to determine the level of quality obtained during the development of the project, and we will only emphasize the main game aspects.
First, let’s start with the negative aspects of the project – even though our compatriots were developing the game, there is no Russian voice acting in the game. The interface is of course great and mighty, but I wanted to hear the dialogues themselves in our colloquial speech.

 

A controversial fact is the arcade aspect. We cannot directly command an individual unit – they are all tied to a specific point and we can control them only as a percentage of the total number. The entire gameplay is based on the capture of industrial buildings and oil rigs. Buildings cannot be built, but only captured and re-equipped. The leveling process needs to be resumed with each mission, which is a little inconvenient and as a result is constantly forgotten.
The plot of the game is quite simple and is the connecting link between missions. The gameplay is well measured and balanced, so you can play Oil Rush for a long period of time without much discomfort. Special attention should be paid to the cinematic camera, which fully reproduces the thrill of naval battles.

 

In our opinion, the game lacks scale and painstakingness, real PTS strategies. It would be much more interesting to play with the development of the base, infrastructure and other opportunities for strategic influence. Little things that fully bring pleasure from the completed mission.

 

We invite you to evaluate part of the game walkthrough of Oil Rush in HD resolution, where you can see for yourself the quality of this product:

Despite the glaring shortcomings, our compatriots have a completely adequate product that, to some extent, can compete with foreign gaming analogues. We hope that the authors of the game will not stand still and will soon present an even larger-scale project.

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 Review: Graphics

 Oil Rush game is based on Unigine’s own engine. Unigine is a cross-platform software developed by the company of the same name, Unigine Corp. It is used either as a game engine or as an engine for virtual reality systems. There are various Unigine licenses, including for independent developers. Unigine currently has support for OpenGL 4.0 and DirectX 11. The name “Unigine” means “universal engine” or “unique engine”. Technology demos of the Unigine engine are included in the Phoronix Test Suite for measuring performance on Linux systems.

Game screenshots in different graphics modes

The development of Unigine began with the open source project Frustum, which was opened in 2002 by Alexander “Frustum” Zapryagaev, who is currently a co-founder (along with Denis Shergin, CEO) and technical director of Unigine Corp., as well as the lead developer of the engine Unigine.

There are twenty-four different Unigine licensees, fourteen of which are involved in game development. Unigine Corporation is also creating the game on its own engine. The engine supports hardware tessellation, SSAO, SSDO, DirectCompute, OpenCL 1.1 and Shader Model 5.0.

I was somewhat confused by the fact that the game, unlike the benchmark released 2 years ago, does not use tessellation, which is a bit of a shame, especially for owners of the most advanced video cards. Having behind the Heaven Benchmark studio with a huge number of settings for tessellation, Oil Rush looks like a poor relative in comparison…

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 Review: Resource-intensive game

All video cards were tested at maximum graphics quality using MSI Afterburner. The purpose of the test is to determine how video cards from different manufacturers behave under the same conditions. The minimum and average frame size is taken as the performance indicator. Below is the configuration of our test systems.

Our video cards were tested at separate screen sizes of 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 at the maximum graphics quality settings allowed by the game. Tests were carried out in DirectX 9, DirectX 11 and OpenGL modes. NVIDIA 3D Vision technology was tested at a resolution of 1920×1080, and AMD Eyefinity at 5760×1080. The efficiency of SLI is zero, but Cross Fire works almost without problems, but only in DirectX 11 mode, in DirectX 9 it is not functional, and in OpenGL mode it even goes into the red…

The minimum FPS was not set during this testing. DirectX 10 was not included in the tests, since the results when using it are completely identical to the mode with DirectX 11 enabled.

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080 DX9

At a resolution of 1920×1080 in DX9, all our tested video cards showed the minimum and acceptable level of performance. The Radeon HD 6990 is not in this mode, as it had problems launching the game…

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560×1600 DX9

 

At a resolution of 2560×1600, with maximum DirectX 9 quality settings, video cards of the Radeon HD 6970 or GeForce GTX 465 level will show an acceptable level of performance.

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080 DX11

At a resolution of 1920×1080 in DX11 mode, the minimum level of performance was shown by video cards of the Radeon HD 5770 or GeForce GTS 450 level. This time the Radeon HD 7970 was not included in the test, since in this mode it froze while loading the game.

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560×1600 DX11

 

At a resolution of 2560×1600, with maximum quality settings, the acceptable level of performance will be shown by video cards of the level of Radeon HD 6950 or GeForce GTX 470. Cards with a video memory capacity of less than 1280 MB in this mode had performance problems and were not included in the test…

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080 Ogl

At a resolution of 1920×1080, the minimum level of acceptable performance was shown by the Radeon HD 6790 or GeForce GTX 460SE. In OpenGL all mode, participants had no problems launching the game.

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560×1600 Ogl

 

At a resolution of 2560×1600, with maximum quality settings, video cards at the level of Radeon HD 6950 or GeForce GTX 470 will show an acceptable level of performance. Cards with video memory capacity of less than 1280 MB again had performance problems…

Testing using NVIDIA 3D Vision technology

 

 Oil Rush does not have a 3D rating in drivers. But there are 3D Vision settings in the graphics settings and the quality of its execution is very good. The graphics in the game, thanks to 3D, immerse the user more deeply in the gaming atmosphere. For strategies, this technology comes in handy.

Tested using NVIDIA 3D Vision technology at maximum DX9 quality settings

Tested using NVIDIA 3D Vision technology at maximum DX11 quality settings

At maximum graphics quality settings, the acceptable level of performance in DirectX 9 mode is found in video cards at the level of GeForce GTX 560. The most optimal card in DirectX 11 mode for 3D will be GeForce GTX 480 and higher.

AMD Eyefinity Technology Testing

 

All our video cards were tested at maximum quality settings on three FuLL HD monitors combined thanks to Eyefinity technology in a resolution of 5760×1080. This technology works without problems, the only drawback is the user interface scattered across the monitors.

Testing at maximum quality settings using AMD Eyefinity technology on three monitors at a resolution of 5760×1200, maximum quality DX9

Testing at maximum quality settings using AMD Eyefinity technology on three monitors at a resolution of 5760×1200, maximum quality DX11

 The minimum that is required for passable playability in Eyefinity mode at maximum settings in DirectX 9 mode is a video card of the Radeon HD 5850 level. For comfortable playability in DirectX 11 mode, you will need a Radeon HD 6990 or higher video accelerator. In DirectX 11 mode, you will need video cards with a video memory capacity of at least two gigabytes.

CPU dependency testing

We tested processor dependence on 11 models of basic configurations that are relevant today. The test was carried out in those places where the value of video cards for the game is minimal and its load was less than 99%, this time at a resolution of 640×480 with maximum graphics quality settings.

Testing at minimum quality settings 640×480 DX11

Oil Rush, like many other games, does not experience problems with processor dependence, so for this game a dual-core top from two or three years ago will be sufficient. On modern models of desktop processors the game runs like a charm.

	Oil Rush is a good game, especially in light of the fact that the game was made by our compatriots. The only significant drawbacks are the arcade orientation and the lack of Russian voice acting.
	The graphics in the game are based on the well-known Unigine. I was somewhat confused by the fact that the game, unlike the benchmark released 2 years ago, does not use tessellation, which is a bit of a shame…
	Optimization in Oil Rush is on point. And this is not only in relation to the hardware, but also to the software – the developers paid attention to all operating systems.

 

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We express our gratitude to all the manufacturing companies that were able to provide test equipment for our GPU tests and we hope that in the future their number will increase significantly!

 

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