[BenchZowner]

Time to see how the "Ambient Occlusion" feature in the nVIDIA Control Panel affects the performance.

If a game doesn't support Ambient Occlusion by its own, with an nVIDIA graphics card you can force ( enable ) Ambient Occlusion by enabling it at the nVIDIA driver's control panel ( there's a "Performance" oriented setting, and the maximum image quality "quality" setting ).

Let's take a look at 2 games for now:

Ambient Occlusion

NFS Shift ( 1920x1440, 2xAA 16xAF, Max Details )
Off = min 138 - avg 155.617 - max 183
Performance = min 105 - avg 113.608 - max 130
Quality = min 78 - avg 85.533 - max 98

Resident Evil 5 Benchmark - Fixed Benchmark ( 1920x1080, 4xAA 2xTrSSAA 0xAF, Max Details )
Off = min 146 - avg 169.667 - max 220
Performance = min 117 - avg 136.976 - max 189.5
Quality = min 109.5 - avg 129.15 - max 172.5