|
 |
|
Performances Comparisons
With Novalogic's Comanche 4 |
|
The
Performance Battlefield |
|
|
|
I guess you could call Comanche 4 the old man on the
block, as it is probably the oldest of the tests in our
current suite of benchmarks.
Comanche 4 uses DX8 class
pixel and vertex shaders to produce some of the
realistic visuals used throughout the game. 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 1024x768,
it seems that all of the cards are quite capable of handling
the DirectX8 class graphics. We find a close 1 through
4 rundown of the cards, from the 5950 Ultra to the 9600 XT,
with only small hits when going to 4XAA and 4XAA with
Anisotropic Filtering. The hit when going to 6XAA was
much more pronounced on the 5900 SE than the 5950 Ultra, and
it barely stayed above the 9600 XT. Anti-aliasing
techniques took an even larger bite out of the frame rates
at 1600x1200. Although only 3 frames separate the top
two cards at first, this changed to over 11 frames at 4XAA.
The 5700 Ultra settled into a distant third place, while the
9600 XT is all but crippled with any optimizations
at this resolution.
|
|
|
Benchmarks / Comparison
With
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory |
|
New
Game, Better Effects, Old Engine |
|
|
|
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
engine 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, with out
anti-aliasing, with 4X AA and again with 4X AA and 8X
anisotropic filtering enabled together. |
Much like we
saw with Gun Metal, Wolfenstein just seems to thrive on
NVIDIA's DX9 class of video cards, leaving the ATi 9600 XT
in their wake. The 5950 Ultra, 5900 SE, and 5700 Ultra
are 1-2-3 in this benchmark. Although the 5900 SE
started out closer to the 5700 Ultra performance with no AA,
it made a slight rebound at 4XAA, before dropping off again
with AF enabled. The loss of frames here were larger
than we typically would expect, losing twice the number of
frames than the 5700 Ultra or 5950 Ultra.
Tomb Raider, Overclocking & The Conclusion
|
