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Performance Comparisons
With Novalogic's Comanche 4 |
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On
this battlefield, there is no substitute for
winning |
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We
used Novalogic's combat helicopter simulator Comanche 4
for our next batch of DirectX tests.
This benchmark uses
DX8 class pixel and vertex shaders to produce some of
the realistic visuals used throughout the demo. Unlike
the previous tests, this benchmark is heavily influenced
by CPU and system memory performance, especially at
lower resolutions. However, when the resolution is
raised and AA and Anisotropic filtering are enabled, the
current crop of video cards tend to slow down quite a
bit. |
At first
glance, it's hard to make any determinations from the first
Comanche 4 graph - all of the cards are performing at
similar levels because we were CPU bound. To set the story straight, we really
needed to raise the resolution to 1600x1200 and apply
anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering.
Originally, the breakdown of scores went down the Radeon
line from the 9800XT to the 9600XT, then followed by the
three GeForce FX cards. When AA and AF were applied,
however, we saw a shift in performance back to the 5950
Ultra. The 9800XT took a decent hit, but managed to
keep a second place showing, while the 5900XT leapfrogged
the 9800 Pro into third. In what seems to be par for
the course, the 9600XT and 5700 Ultra battled it out for
last, both running under 30 frames per second.
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Making Comparisons
With
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory |
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New
Game, Better Effects, Old Engine |
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We also ran through a
batch of timedemos with the OpenGL game Wolfenstein:
Enemy Territory.
Wolfenstein:
ET is a free, standalone multiplayer game that is based
on the original Return to Castle Wolfenstein, which was
released a few years back.
It uses a modified Quake3
core yet exhibits plenty of CPU scaling and platform
variation, which also makes it a good benchmarking
tool. We created a custom demo and used the built-in
timedemo feature to check each card's frame rate. The
tests below were run at 1024x768 and 1600x1200 without
anti-aliasing and again with 4X AA and 8X
anisotropic filtering enabled concurrently. |
All of the GFFX cards
finished in the top three, followed by the Radeons which
were in a dead heat. Tacking on some AA and
anisotropic filtering broke up the pack somewhat. The
5950 Ultra still maintained its lead, but the 5900XT fell
behind each of the Radeon 9800s. The 5700 Ultra
managed to stay in the hunt at 60.1 fps sorely beating the
9600XT by over 50%. At 1600x1200, we see some
similarities to what happened ay 1024x768 with AA+AF;
Wolfenstein: ET runs smoothly at first on the GeForce FX
cards, but they begin to drop off somewhat when the settings
are raised. Although the 9800 tandem originally pushed
ahead of the 5900XT in the latter test, we saw a reversal of
fortune when anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering were
applied.
What does it all mean?
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