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 | | Benchmarking With Comanche 4 | | The DirectX Approach. | | 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? | | | Benchmarking With Serious Sam SE | | OpenGL | | 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 | 
