The Performance of Saints Row 2: A Critical Analysis

In this article, we will delve into the performance of Saints Row 2 on various graphics cards, including the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT and HD 3800 series, as well as more modern GPUs such as the AMD Radeon HD 7950 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580. We will explore the game's performance at different resolutions and settings to provide an in-depth analysis of its compatibility with these graphics cards.

Testing the Game on Older Hardware

When testing the game on older hardware, including the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT and HD 3800 series, we found that the game did not perform well. At 1080p with high settings, the game struggled to run smoothly, resulting in very low frame rates. This suggests that the game may not be compatible with this level of hardware. However, at 480p with low settings, the game was able to run more smoothly, albeit still with significant stuttering and lag.

Moving on to More Powerful Hardware

As we upgraded our hardware to more powerful GPUs, such as the AMD Radeon HD 7950 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580, we found that the game's performance improved, but only marginally. At 1080p, the average frame rate was around 38 FPS, with significant stuttering and lag. However, at 480p, the average frame rate was a more respectable 62 FPS. It's worth noting that the Steam version of the game is not capped, which may have contributed to the smoother performance.

The Impact of SLI

Unfortunately, we were unable to get the game running in SLI mode on our GTX 580 graphics card, which would have potentially improved performance. This suggests that the game's developers may not have optimized it for multi-GPU rendering.

Using More Powerful Hardware: The GTA 1060 and 1070

When we upgraded to more modern GPUs such as the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 and GTX 1070, we found that the game's performance improved significantly. However, instead of the expected smooth performance, we saw average frame rates of around 43 FPS at 1080p. This suggests that the game may be running into issues with this level of hardware.

The GTX 1070: A Game Changer?

Finally, when we upgraded to the most powerful GPU tested, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070, we were disappointed by its performance. The average frame rate was around 43 FPS at 1080p, and even at 480p, it struggled to run smoothly, with significant stuttering and lag.

The Importance of Community-Driven Fixes

Despite our best efforts to optimize the game for different hardware configurations, we found that the vanilla game would still struggle to run smoothly. However, thanks to the efforts of the gaming community, patches such as the Gentleman of the Row mega mod have been developed to improve performance. These fixes are a testament to the dedication and ingenuity of the gaming community.

Conclusion

In conclusion, our analysis has shown that Saints Row 2 is not compatible with all levels of graphics cards. While more powerful hardware may provide improved performance, it's clear that the game still struggles with many configurations. However, thanks to the efforts of the gaming community, fixes are available to improve performance. Despite its issues, we still enjoy playing this game and hope that future updates will address these compatibility issues.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enGTA for darksouls arkham knight all great contenders for the title of the most unoptimized PC game on the market as bad as they may seem performance wise they don't quite compare to the incredibly and somewhat hilariously terrible Saints Row 2 PC port despite the community working together to release patches that clear up a lot of the issues the vanilla game is still something quite magnificent to behold but not for the right reasons today's video is a little different as you may have noticed but I hope you guys enjoy it nonetheless the 5 graphics cards you see before you by the exception of the 8800 UGS on the left will all handle even the latest games with relative ease at full HD you may have to reduce the settings but let's just say most games pre-2012 will run at their highest settings above or beyond at 30 fps 60 a lot of the time granted a couple of exceptions to this rule may include crisis or GTA 4 but turning down graphical quality or resolution with those will iron out most of the flaws but what if I told you none of these cards will run Saints Row two smoothly even at the lowest in game settings that's right 480p included you probably wouldn't believe me so why does Saints Row 2 run so badly on PC well it's a direct pulp based on the Xbox 360 version though it's very CPU bound and ideally needs a 3.2 gigahertz processor to run at its best because this is the speed of the 360 cpu the further you get from that speed the more bugs you'll encounter I've directly combatted this by using my Rison 5 1600 which is clocked natively at 3.2 gigahertz and it's much faster than anything you would have found at the time of this game's release but you'll soon see that even having a decent processor to use with this game is probably about as useful as a handbrake on a canoe as the game just can't make very good use of your PC's resources normally an operating system will allocate more memory to a program that needs it after unloading other prefetch data but for some reason this isn't the case here so whether you have Intel HD Nvidia or AMD graphics and more than meetly supposed recommended specs there's no guarantee you'll be able to play the game smooth as the game just doesn't care about your GTX all your Radeon HD as I shall now demonstrate let's start off with the 8800 GT s not a powerful card by today's standards but with the game recommending an 8800 GT or HD 3800 series GPU this is the sort of thing that you should have felt confident going into this game with back in 2009 I've tested the game at both 1080p at the high settings along with 480p at the lowest settings today to give you an idea of what to expect at both ends of the spectrum as you can see the game does not like this card at all at 1080p with very low frame rates maybe Full HD is a little match for this thing so what about the absolute lowest settings this is saints row 2 at 480p although the average has improved the percentile figures demonstrate the level of stutter that can be seen neither the CPU or GPU are holding the game back as they just aren't being utilized very well so let's move on to more powerful hardware this is the HD 7950 jumping back into the game and once again we see a pretty terrible rizzo at 1080p the average of 38 isn't that bad but thanks to the stata that accompanies it it's near enough impossible to enjoy the game and our hardware isn't really being used to its full capability however it is still an improvement and at 480p we sort of delightful 62 fps I don't believe the steam version is capped either and the percentile figures on screen give us a better idea of performance and at 38 and 22 respectively it actually fed okay at this rez with a few freezes and an eventual crash to the desktop so now that we're getting toward the realms of playable surely my Zeus Mars 2 can make light work of this game with 2 GTX 580 s on a single card it's a slightly old school but still powerful beast although SLI is unfortunately off the table here as I just could not get it to work storming head with a single GTX 580 and what's very interesting is that at 1080p the game ran almost exactly the same as the 7950 down to the percentile figures and once again indicated heavy stuttering and freezes at 480p well I think it's safe to say we're almost having a superb experience albeit with a little lag here and there so now it's time for the big boys the GTA 1060 and 1070 this is where Saints Row two meets its maker prepare for frame rates like you've never seen them before actually that statement is still sort of correct but not in the way I hoped the ten sixty at 1080p average is our at forty three frames per second with you guessed it major stutter and lag at sub HD 480p our figures once again show that the game will now run smoother overall but will suffer from technical issues no matter where you are on the map I stuck within this same sort of section for a fair test and all results were taken after twenty minutes of gameplay finally the gtx 1070 steps up to the plate with eight gigabytes of vram and a recommended retail price of over three hundred and fifty dollars this is surely the game changer right wrong 1080p doesn't fare too differently from the other cards and once again you one percent and point one percent lows tell us everything we need to know about steady performance none of which this game exhibits so is it any smoother here at 480p well while the average comes in a delightful sixty it's still not really that playable the resolution itself doesn't actually bother me that much and by now you'll probably be tearing your hair oh I'm rushing up to buy an Xbox 360 or ps3 if you want to play this game but hold on just a second because the gaming community have fixed a lot of the issues through things like the gentleman of the row mega mod and other community released patches that can improve performance somewhat though the vanilla game will still likely give users trouble for years to come no matter the hardware I actually really like this game though and just to clear things up I went back and tweaked various settings turning certain things off and other things on as well as testing out a variety of different resolutions to see if I could get this thing running stable but unfortunately nothing I did worked besides installing those aforementioned community patches and even after trying my Rison 3 and i-5 3470 for a bit of variation nothing really improved the gameplay I even switched the Windows 7 with similar results but anyway I hope you guys enjoyed today's video despite its problems this is still one of my all-time favorite games but after playing it again today I just had to share my performance findings with you as I'm not sure I've ever encountered anything that runs so badly on the PC guys if you liked this video leave a lock on it if you didn't leave a dislike subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already as always thank you and I'll see you in the next oneGTA for darksouls arkham knight all great contenders for the title of the most unoptimized PC game on the market as bad as they may seem performance wise they don't quite compare to the incredibly and somewhat hilariously terrible Saints Row 2 PC port despite the community working together to release patches that clear up a lot of the issues the vanilla game is still something quite magnificent to behold but not for the right reasons today's video is a little different as you may have noticed but I hope you guys enjoy it nonetheless the 5 graphics cards you see before you by the exception of the 8800 UGS on the left will all handle even the latest games with relative ease at full HD you may have to reduce the settings but let's just say most games pre-2012 will run at their highest settings above or beyond at 30 fps 60 a lot of the time granted a couple of exceptions to this rule may include crisis or GTA 4 but turning down graphical quality or resolution with those will iron out most of the flaws but what if I told you none of these cards will run Saints Row two smoothly even at the lowest in game settings that's right 480p included you probably wouldn't believe me so why does Saints Row 2 run so badly on PC well it's a direct pulp based on the Xbox 360 version though it's very CPU bound and ideally needs a 3.2 gigahertz processor to run at its best because this is the speed of the 360 cpu the further you get from that speed the more bugs you'll encounter I've directly combatted this by using my Rison 5 1600 which is clocked natively at 3.2 gigahertz and it's much faster than anything you would have found at the time of this game's release but you'll soon see that even having a decent processor to use with this game is probably about as useful as a handbrake on a canoe as the game just can't make very good use of your PC's resources normally an operating system will allocate more memory to a program that needs it after unloading other prefetch data but for some reason this isn't the case here so whether you have Intel HD Nvidia or AMD graphics and more than meetly supposed recommended specs there's no guarantee you'll be able to play the game smooth as the game just doesn't care about your GTX all your Radeon HD as I shall now demonstrate let's start off with the 8800 GT s not a powerful card by today's standards but with the game recommending an 8800 GT or HD 3800 series GPU this is the sort of thing that you should have felt confident going into this game with back in 2009 I've tested the game at both 1080p at the high settings along with 480p at the lowest settings today to give you an idea of what to expect at both ends of the spectrum as you can see the game does not like this card at all at 1080p with very low frame rates maybe Full HD is a little match for this thing so what about the absolute lowest settings this is saints row 2 at 480p although the average has improved the percentile figures demonstrate the level of stutter that can be seen neither the CPU or GPU are holding the game back as they just aren't being utilized very well so let's move on to more powerful hardware this is the HD 7950 jumping back into the game and once again we see a pretty terrible rizzo at 1080p the average of 38 isn't that bad but thanks to the stata that accompanies it it's near enough impossible to enjoy the game and our hardware isn't really being used to its full capability however it is still an improvement and at 480p we sort of delightful 62 fps I don't believe the steam version is capped either and the percentile figures on screen give us a better idea of performance and at 38 and 22 respectively it actually fed okay at this rez with a few freezes and an eventual crash to the desktop so now that we're getting toward the realms of playable surely my Zeus Mars 2 can make light work of this game with 2 GTX 580 s on a single card it's a slightly old school but still powerful beast although SLI is unfortunately off the table here as I just could not get it to work storming head with a single GTX 580 and what's very interesting is that at 1080p the game ran almost exactly the same as the 7950 down to the percentile figures and once again indicated heavy stuttering and freezes at 480p well I think it's safe to say we're almost having a superb experience albeit with a little lag here and there so now it's time for the big boys the GTA 1060 and 1070 this is where Saints Row two meets its maker prepare for frame rates like you've never seen them before actually that statement is still sort of correct but not in the way I hoped the ten sixty at 1080p average is our at forty three frames per second with you guessed it major stutter and lag at sub HD 480p our figures once again show that the game will now run smoother overall but will suffer from technical issues no matter where you are on the map I stuck within this same sort of section for a fair test and all results were taken after twenty minutes of gameplay finally the gtx 1070 steps up to the plate with eight gigabytes of vram and a recommended retail price of over three hundred and fifty dollars this is surely the game changer right wrong 1080p doesn't fare too differently from the other cards and once again you one percent and point one percent lows tell us everything we need to know about steady performance none of which this game exhibits so is it any smoother here at 480p well while the average comes in a delightful sixty it's still not really that playable the resolution itself doesn't actually bother me that much and by now you'll probably be tearing your hair oh I'm rushing up to buy an Xbox 360 or ps3 if you want to play this game but hold on just a second because the gaming community have fixed a lot of the issues through things like the gentleman of the row mega mod and other community released patches that can improve performance somewhat though the vanilla game will still likely give users trouble for years to come no matter the hardware I actually really like this game though and just to clear things up I went back and tweaked various settings turning certain things off and other things on as well as testing out a variety of different resolutions to see if I could get this thing running stable but unfortunately nothing I did worked besides installing those aforementioned community patches and even after trying my Rison 3 and i-5 3470 for a bit of variation nothing really improved the gameplay I even switched the Windows 7 with similar results but anyway I hope you guys enjoyed today's video despite its problems this is still one of my all-time favorite games but after playing it again today I just had to share my performance findings with you as I'm not sure I've ever encountered anything that runs so badly on the PC guys if you liked this video leave a lock on it if you didn't leave a dislike subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already as always thank you and I'll see you in the next one\n"