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Performances Comparisons
With Novalogic's Comanche 4 |
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Combat Helicopter Sim |
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Comanche
4
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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. |
The S3
DeltaChrome S8 Nitro redeemed itself somewhat in the
Comanche 4 benchmark when anti-aliasing was disabled, where
the card managed to pull off its first victory. Once
we enabled anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, however,
it was all downhill. In the low resolution test, with
AA and Aniso enabled concurrently, the DeltaChromes were
severely outperformed by the NVIDIA and ATi powered cards.
In the high resolution test, the DeltaChromes did a bit
better, relatively speaking, but frame rates were too low to
be considered playable.
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Benchmarks / Comparison
With
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory |
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Q3
Engine Based Freebie |
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Wolfenstein: ET
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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, that was released
a few years back. It uses a heavily modified version of
the Quake 3 engine which makes it a very easy to use
benchmarking tool. We created our own custom demo and
used the built-in timedemo feature to check each card's
frame rate. The tests below were run at 1024x768 and
again at 1600x1200, without anisotropic filtering and
again with 8X and 16X aniso enabled. |
As we mentioned
earlier, the S3 DeltaChromes currently do not offer any
anti-aliasing in OpenGL applications, which hints at the
relative immaturity of S3 OpenGL support. We asked S3 when
(or if) they planned to add this feature in a future
driver release and were told it's currently not in the
schedule. So, if you crave AA in OpenGL, the
DeltaChromes are not for you. In an effort to give you
multiple data points in an OpenGL benchmark, we tested our
custom Wolfenstein timedemo with two different levels of
Anisotropic filtering enabled (8X and 16X). The
GeForce cards only offer up to 8X aniso, hence the "N/A"s in
our graphs. The DeltaChrome S8 and S8 Nitro again
stumbled, getting outpaced by 40%+ margins in this test.
It's clear that S3 has some work to do with regard to OpenGL
performance with the DeltaChromes.
Tomb Raider: AOD, Overclocking & Our Final Analysis
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