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Remedy's Max Payne uses DirectX
8 to drive its impressive graphical environments and
life-like characters. The test we are running taxes
heavily on any graphics subsystem and is a playback of the
final scene of the game. In general, frame rates will
be higher in actual game play. This benchmark is
significantly more demanding.
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Max
Payne - DirectX 8 Performance |
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Hard core graphics
with "nothing to lose" |
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For reference,
here is how we set the game engine up for testing. We
gave the various contenders no slack whatsoever and set all
available features to maximum.
Interestingly
enough the GeForce4 Ti 4600 does hold a lead here but it is
far less impressive than what it delivered in our other
tests. Perhaps this is more of a limitation of the
game engine than anything else. We are not certain
here however. We are trying to get our hands on the
Epic's updated Unreal Game Engine benchmark for testing, to
see what additional DirectX 8 performance information we can
obtain.
Anisotropic Filtering
Tests - Quake 3:
Finally, we'll
take a quick step back to Quake 3 to show you what
impact the Anisotropic Filtering setting in OpenGL have on
peformance.
We're not
exactly sure what the MX does for Anisotropic Filtering with
it's "enabled" mode, which is a different drop down menu
option than the Ti 4600's 2X, 4X and 8X modes. Clearly, it
is something less than 16 tap aniso. In any
event, you can see there is a fairly significant performance
hit setting high levels of aniso filtering, even for the
GeForce4 Ti 4600. Regardless, frame rates are still
excellent with 16 tap anisotropic filtering and Quincunx AA,
for the GeForce4 Ti 4600.
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Overclocking
The
GeForce4 Ti 4600 |
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Yeah baby! |
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We'll keep this
short and sweet and tell you that our GeForce4 Ti 4600 with
just a little tweak of the coolbits slider, was able to hit
a 325MHz core and 715MHz (DDR) memory speed, without an
issue and with full stability through a full 3DMark 2001
run. Your results may vary but here are the glorious
results!
GeForce4 Ti
4600 @ 325/715
We'll have no
formal rating here, of the GeForce4 Ti 4600 and GeForce4 MX
460, since you can't actually purchase the reference boards
we tested. However, it would be an understatement to
say that we were impressed with the performance of both
products based on their target markets, that being both the
high end enthusiast/gamer segments and value segments.
The GeForce4 Ti 4600 is an exponential leap in performance,
in many cases, especially when it comes to anti-aliasing.
In addition, new features like Accuview AA and configurable
Anisotropic filtering, affords us a few more notches up the
image quality spectrum, which is always more than welcome.
The GeForce4 MX
460 is a little bit more difficult to position as a product
for NVIDIA and for us here at HotHardware. However,
for sure when these cards hit the retail shelves and are
dancing down around the $130 mark, most likely in the not so
distant future, they'll be hard to pass up for the masses on
a budget. In addition, with AA performance that is
more than acceptable, one certainly gets a high ROI with
this product, where most cards in this price range can't
even think of running most any kind of AA.
All told, NVIDIA
scores again with true next generation product. In the
competitive game of 3D Graphics for the PC, there seems to
be a case of "one-upsmanship" going on and we are all the
benefactors. ATi is going to have a tall order
answering this latest call from NVIDIA. However, I'm
sure we'll all be listening intently for the response.
So
you're the Mack-Daddy of PC Hardware huh?
Get into the HotHardware PC Hardware Forums and Prove it!
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