Voodoo PC OMEN a121x CrossFire Extreme Gamer PC

Name: Voodoo PC OMEN a121x CrossFire Extreme Gamer PC - Page 13
Brand: Voodoo

by Dave Altavilla — Wednesday, April 26, 2006, 09:00 PM EDT

Splinter Cell Chaos Theory & Quake 4

Page 13: Splinter Cell Chaos Theory & Quake 4

Splinter Cell Chaos Theory is a game that definitely can tax single GPU architectures, but multi-GPU setups have a fairly easy time with it. The game engine also seems to heavily favor ATI's core GPU at the moment as well.

Performance Comparisons with Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.05

DirectX 9 and Shader Model 3.0

SC: Chaos Theory

Based on a heavily modified version of the Unreal Engine, enhanced with a slew of DX9 shaders, lighting and mapping effects, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is gorgeous with its very immersive, albeit dark, environment. The game engine has a shader model 3.0 code path that allows the GeForce 6 & 7 Series of cards and the X1000 family of cards to really shine, and a recent patch has implemented a shader model 2.0 path for ATI's X8x0 generation of graphics hardware. For these tests we enabled the SM 3.0 path on all of the cards we tested. However, High Dynamic Range rendering was disabled so that we could test the game with anti-aliasing enabled (a future patch should enable AA with HDR on the X1K family). We benchmarked the game at a resolution of 1600 x 1200 with 4X AA and 16X anisotropic filtering enabled.

With Splinter Cell:CT, the game still exhibits a fair amount of GPU dependency and the two CrossFire-based systems pull out 25-30 fps better frame rates than our GeForce 7900 GTX SLI setup. The Voodoo OMEN system doesn't get to stretch its legs too much though and only beats our standard FX-60 test-bed by a few extra frames.

Performance Comparisons with Quake 4

OpenGL Quad-Damage

Quake 4

id Software, in conjunction with developer Raven, recently released the latest addition to the wildly popular Quake franchise, Quake 4. Quake 4 is based upon an updated and slightly modified version of the Doom 3 engine, and as such performance characteristics between the two titles are very similar. Like Doom 3, Quake 4 is also an OpenGL game that uses extremely high-detailed textures and a ton of dynamic lighting and shadows, but unlike Doom3, Quake 4 features some outdoor environments as well. We ran this Quake 4 benchmark using a custom timedemo with the game set to its "High-Quality" mode at a resolution of 1600 x 1200 with 4X AA and 8X aniso enabled simultaneously.

If ever there was an Achilles' heel for ATI, OpenGL would have to be it. Here, both the OMEN CrossFire and our reference CrossFire X1900 XT system fall victim to NVIDIA's 7900GTX SLI setup. That's not to say that things weren't playable by any means though. 80+ fps is more than enough to get you by and at a 1600x1200 resolution with 4X AA and high quality AF on, the visuals are very impressive. The OMEN's factory tweaked overclock doesn't afford it much here in this test, however.