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Benchmarking With
Comanche 4 |
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The DirectX
Approach. |
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NovaLogic's
Comanche 4 is a relative newcomer to the HotHardware testing
labs, although I think it is going to be around for a long
time. This benchmark is not only one of the most
gorgeous benchmarking applications around, it is also very
effective in testing a video card's DirectX 8 capabilities.
So without further adieu...Comanche 4...
As with the 3DMark2001SE tests, the GeForce4 Ti4600
dominated the test with its pure horsepower. Although,
unlike the results of the 3DMark2001SE scores, the Radeon
slipped to third place at 1024x768x32, unable to keep up
with the slower Ti500.
As we increased the resolution, the nVidia based cards held
their own against the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500, while the
Radeon dropped fewer frames than the GeForce3 Ti500.
Once again, we can see that the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500
performs well in DirectX 8 benchmark tests, but it simply
can't compete with nVidia's more powerful Ti4600. We
were very surprised to see how well the Ti500 held up to the
pressure, but the fun isn't over yet! We still need to
give the cards a steady dose of OpenGL and see if the
All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 can dominate a few tests of its
own.
So what do you
say we start things off with some Serious Sam SE?
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Benchmarking With
Serious Sam SE |
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OpenGL |
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Serious Sam SE
is one of those rare benchmark utilities that can test both
DirectX and OpenGL performance. For this test, we'll
take advantage of its OpenGL abilities and see how well the
All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 can push out the FPS compared to
the nVidia based videocards.
*Note:
When running the Serious Sam SE benchmark, we've seen
variations in scores that we could not explain. It
turns out that the benchmark has the ability to adjust its
settings based on the video card that is installed, making
it very hard to come up with a consistent, accurate
comparison. Thankfully,
Anthony "Reverend" Tan has put together Serious Sam
Benchmark Scripts that helps to level the playing field
between the various cards. In our tests we ran the
script Max Quality settings, with no anisotropic filtering
enabled and set the resolution and color depth accordingly.
Well now, here
we get to see the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 step up and
narrow the lead of the Ti4600, but it still couldn't catch
it. The All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 did take a solid
lead over the Ti500 though. Now we''ll bump up the
resolution to 1280x1024...
Once again, the
All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 held its own well against the
Ti4600, narrowing the gap to within 3FPS, although none of
the cards pushed passed the minimum 60FPS we like to see to
consider a game playable at a specific resolution. The
All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 performed quite well,
demonstrating some OpenGL prowess with Serious Sam SE.
What do you say we keep the OpenGL testing going with a dose
of Quake 3?
Quake 3 & Final Thoughts
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