Call of Duty 2
The first thing to note about Call of Duty 2 is that it is a DirectX game. It does not use OpenGL, and therefore there should be no performance difference whether we use Catalyst 5.10 or 5.11. These tests were run using the Catalyst 5.11 drivers. First off we have the effect of the SMP patch on the lowest quality settings.


You can see right away that the trends are obviously not reminiscent of the Quake 4 results, meaning that this game is not nearly as CPU limited. However, the potential performance increases can still be high considering it is such a demanding game, and indeed we noticed an average boost of 25.1%. Now, 25.1% might seem like a small number in a hardware world where numbers can be in the trillions, but to put this into perspective: if I was 25.1% taller, I would be taller than Yao Ming. That’s right NBA, watch out. In a game like CoD 2, a 25.1% performance increase is absolutely staggering – but that is on low settings.

This next test will be for CoD 2 on the highest possible settings. Playing CoD 2 on the highest settings at the highest resolution is pretty much the most demanding thing you can tell your computer to do these days. So with this SMP patch, we don’t expect too high of a performance increase due to the more prominent limitation coming from the video card.


Indeed, the average increase from the SMP patch in CoD2 at the highest possible settings and at resolutions that gamers use was just 10%. This is the lowest increase we have seen from any of the tests, but 10% in CoD2 on high detail is certainly nothing to scoff at. A 10% increase can easily result in frame rates going from just playable to pretty enjoyable.