HIS Excalibur X800 Pro - VIVO Edition with IceQ II

Performance Comparisons With Novalogic's Comanche 4 Combat Helicopter Sim

Comanche 4

To give you sim fans a small taste of what these cards can do, we used Novalogic's combat helicopter simulator Comanche 4 for our next batch of DirectX tests. Comanche 4 uses DX8 class pixel and vertex shaders to produce some of the realistic visuals used throughout the game. Unlike some of the previous tests, though, this benchmark is heavily influenced by CPU and system memory performance, especially at lower resolutions. However, when the resolution is raised and anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering are enabled, the current crop of 3D accelerators tend to slow down quite a bit.

With Comanche 4 being bound so closely to the CPU, the variation in performance is not so drastic as seen in previous tests.  Even the 5900XT managed to be competitive, taking the lead by a frame or two at 1024 x 768.  Once we increased the test to 1600 x 1200, each card's performance came into play and the differences were more evident.  Overall, the X800 Pro turned out the best performance at 1600 x 1200, slipping a mere 8 frames from the No AA test through the 4X AA/16 Aniso test.  Even at 1600 x 1200, however, the GeForce FX5900XT managed to stay in the game, although it is not capable of running 16X Anisotropic Filtering, hence the N/A on the chart.