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We continued our DirectX testing
with Epic's visually impressive Unreal Tournament 2003.
When testing with UT2003, we use a special utility that is
supposed to ensure that all of the cards are being
benchmarked using the exact same in-game settings and
"High-Quality" graphical options. Unfortunately,
thanks to a fresh crop of driver "glitches", the validity of
the GeForce FX's scores have been called into question
because the texture filtering level changes to something
between trilinear and bilinear when Anisotropic filtering is
enabled (click
here for more detailed information on this topic). Keep that in mind
when viewing these results. (Note: Rumor has it, the
filtering issue will be addressed in a future driver release
that should be available very soon.)
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Performances Comparisons
With UT:2003 |
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Epic's DX Shooter |
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The G9600 Pro performed very
well at 1024x768, posting playable (>60FPS) frame rates with
and without anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled.
The Tachyon was outpaced by the ATi built card at 1024x768,
but their roles were reversed when we raised the resolution
to 1600x1200. At 1600x1200 the Tachyon pulled ahead,
but both Radeon 9600 Pros were capable of playable frame
rates only when AA and Aniso were disabled at this high
resolution. Obviously,
the high-end cards again proved their dominance, which is to
be expected considering they cost more than twice as much as
the Radeon 9600 Pros.
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Benchmarks / Comparison
With
Quake 3 Arena v1.32 |
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How
Old is This Game in Dog Years? |
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Next, we moved on to some OpenGL
tests with the granddaddy of all benchmarks, Quake 3 Arena.
We installed the latest point release, v1.32, and ran some
tests using the built-in timedemo, "demo four". Before
running these tests, we set Quake 3 to its "High Quality"
graphics option with Tri-Linear filtering enabled, and then
we maxed out the texture quality and geometric detail
options.
The Tachyon G9600 Pro tore right
through the Quake 3 Arena timedemo runs. The G9600 Pro
produced playable frame rates, regardless of resolution, or
whether or not AA and Aniso were enabled. It was also
the faster of the two 9600 Pros tested here in all but two
of the tests. We use the term "faster" very loosely
though. A 3 or 4 frame per second advantage at these
performance levels means virtually nothing.
Some
Serious Sam, Overclocking & The Conclusion...
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