We continued our OpenGL testing
with some tests using Croteam's Serious Sam: The Second
Encounter. We configured the game to use OpenGL and ran the
"Little Trouble" time demo using the "Extreme Quality"
script, created by the folks at Beyond3D, to max out the
texture and filtering quality, and to be sure all of the
cards tested were using the exact same in-game options.
At 1024x768 and at 1280x1024,
the GeForce 4 Ti4600 actually managed to surpass both of the
RADEON 9700 Pros when Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic
filtering was disabled. Once we enabled AA and Aniso
though, the GeForce 4 simply could not keep up with the
RADEONs. With 4X AA enabled the Tachyon G9700 and Maya
II were about twice as fast as the GF4. When AA and
Aniso were enabled however, the GF4 put up a much stronger
fight, remaining within a few frames per second.
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Quake 3 Arena v1.32 |
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Running Out of Steam |
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For our next
batch of OpenGL benchmarks we updated Quake 3 Arena with
the most recent v1.32 Point Release, and ran timedemo
"Four". Quake 3 has definitely lost some of it's
worthiness as a video card benchmark, but it is still
useful for demonstrating the relative performance of one
product versus another. We set the game to its "High
Quality" mode, enabled Trilinear filtering and maxed out
the texture quality and geometry sliders before running
any tests...
Without any Anti-Aliasing or
Anisotropic filtering, the GeForce 4 Ti4600 held its ground,
and outpaced both the Tachyon G9700 and Maya II at 1024x768,
but from then on the story was much different. The
RADEONs outperformed the GF4 by over 60% at 1024x768 when 4X
AA was enabled, and by about 120% at 1600x1200 when AA and
Aniso were enabled. In the Quake 3 tests, the Gigabyte
Maya II nudged slightly ahead of the Tachyon G9700, but
again, because they are clocked at exactly the same levels,
the performance difference was negligible.
Overclocking & The Heat Meter
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