Left for Dead 2 - DirectX 9 - 3D Vision / AMD HD3D

Like the original, Left 4 Dead 2 is set during the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic, and focuses on four survivors fighting against hordes of the infected. The survivors must fight their way through levels, interspersed with safe houses that act as checkpoints, with the goal of reaching a rescue vehicle at the campaign's finale. The gameplay is procedurally altered by an artificial intelligence engine dubbed the "Director" that monitors the players' performance and alters the scenario to provide a dynamic challenge for the players as they progress. Several new features have been introduced, such as new types of infected, melee weapons, and a story-arc that connects each of the game's five campaigns together.

Testing was performed at 1920x1080 8aa 16af with 3D enabled.

As we have noted in many previous reviews the Stereoscopic 3D experience available for gaming on Radeon GPUs is less than ideal. There are a number of limitations such as lack of game support, lack of multi-GPU support and lack of DX11 support at this time which limits the scenarios where we can test the technology. NVIDIA's 3D Vision works on the majority of games though with particular recent highlights being BulletStorm and Civ 5.

One game which does allow us to test the performance of the cards is Left 4 Dead 2 and in this game we see the GTX 590 excelling, so much so that we can play in 3D surround mode from a single card with a little anti-aliasing.

Click here to view the full-size screenshot (5760x1080)