When developing Sacred 2, Ascaron was closely working together with Intel. The result of this cooperation: The Sacred successor is said to be optimized for being displayed on Notebooks with Intel Centrino 2 technology and integrated GM45 graphics chip.
With low details Sacred 2 looses a lot of its atmosphere, but it is even running on a Geforce 9300M GS. [Source: view picture gallery]
Among the Notebook related features of Sacred 2 are a status indicator for the battery charge and a status bar for the Wifi connectivity as well as AdHoc multiplayer mode that allows the easy setup of games. Ascaron also optimized the CPU and graphics area. We tested if a smooth gaming experience is possible on notebooks and what settings the players can expect.
Sacred 2: Tested on Sony Vaio Z11MNThose are the graphics settings we used for our test on the Sony Vaio Z11MN. [Source: view picture gallery]
Our test Notebook is Sony’s Vaio Z11MN, which was awarded Top Product in our current German print magazine. The Laptop is equipped with a Core 2 Duo P8400 (2x 2.26 GHz), 2x 2,048 MiByte DDR3 1,066 MHz, a 13.1 inch display with a native resolution of 1,366 x 768 pixels and two 250 GiByte hard drives. Additionally you can switch between the integrated Intel graphics chip and a Geforce 9300M GS. Both chips can access 128 MiByte GDDR3 video memory (702 MHz).
GM45: Limited possibilities for performance optimizationsFor the GM45 graphics chip Sacred 2 recommends the following settings: Normal texture quality (default), no shadows, low render, ground and effect details, minimal grass details and a resolution of 1,366 x 768. But with those settings Sacred 2 is running at poor 14 frames per second. The possibilities for performance optimizations are limited. If you change the ground details to “very low” you get an additional frame per second, but the textures look just lousy. A lower resolution of 1,024 x 768 also increases the performance by one frame per second, but then Sacred 2 isn’t sharp anymore since it isn’t visualized in the native resolution f the display.
Geforce 9300M GS: More frames per secondWhen we use the Geforce 9300M GS chip of the Sony Vaio Z11MN the situation changes drastically. Although the 9300M GS is regarded as a lower class Notebook graphics solution the overall performance reaches smoothly playable 32 frames per second. Unfortunately we couldn’t test how much the Day One Patch affects the performance yet.
Intel’s integrated graphics chip grants a good texture quality in Sacred 2, but for graphical extras like shadows or improved lighting, the GM45 is too weak. [Source: view picture gallery]
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