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Next, we did
some benchmarking with one of the more visually impressive
DirectX 8 games currently available, Epic's Unreal
Tournament 2003. When it was released, UT 2003's
graphics were definitely a cut above the rest. Couple
this top-notch imagery with quality enhancing features like
AA and Anisotropic filtering and UT 2003 can slow just about
any video card currently available to a crawl. When
testing with UT 2003, we use a special utility and game
initialization settings that ensure all of the cards are
benchmarked with the exact same in-game settings and
"High-Quality" graphical options.
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Performances Comparisons
With UT:2003 |
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Head Shot! |
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The Sapphire
Ultimate Edition Radeons manhandled Unreal Tournament 2003
in every configuration when run at 1024x768. Both of
the 9800 Pros, and both of the 9600 Pros posted playable
frame rates regardless of what settings were used at
1024x768. When we raised the resolution to 1600x1200,
the Radeon 9800 Pros continued to perform very well.
The Radeon 9600 Pros on the other hand performed well at
1600x1200 when anti-aliasing was disabled, but their scores
fell below playable levels once anti-aliasing was enabled at
this high resolution.
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Benchmarks / Comparison
With
Quake 3 Arena v1.32 |
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I
Cannot Wait For Doom III...Ugh |
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We began our
OpenGL testing with the venerable Quake 3 Arena. We
installed the latest v1.32 point release and ran a series of
tests using the built-in timedemo, "four". We
configured Quake 3 to use the "High Quality" graphics option
with tri-linear filtering enabled, and then we maxed out the
texture quality and geometric detail before running any of
these tests.
You know a
benchmark is getting old when a mainstream card can post
playable frame rates at 1600x1200 with 4X anti-aliasing and
8X anisotropic filtering enabled. The Radeon 9800 Pros
hardly broke a sweat in this test, regardless of what
resolution or setting was used. Obviously, the Radeon
9600 Pros didn't keep up with the more powerful 9800s, but
they too performed very well in Quake 3 Arena.
Serious Sam, Overclocking & The Conclusion
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