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PC Mark 2004

PCMark04 is the latest version of the popular PCMark series. PCMark04 is an application-based benchmark and a premium tool for measuring overall PC performance. It uses portions of real applications instead of including very large applications or using specifically created code. This allows PCMark04 to be a smaller installation as well as to report very accurate results. As far as possible, PCMark04 uses public domain applications whose source code can be freely examined by any user. 
 

Info and download - Download!

The results compare your average 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 system (Intel 865 chipset) with today's new mainboard and CPU.

The Intel Intel Edition mainboards clearly are favored over AMD systems with this benchmark. The scores in favor of Intel CPU's can relate to two things, Hyper-threading technology and the other, clock for clock performance. Bare in mind that this Athlon 64 4000+ CPU runs at 2400 MHz while our fastest Intel silicon handles 4000 MHz. I did not expect this outcome though, so I checked other articles. And they are on par with our findings. Really nice scores for the AA8XE though. That's top-notch performance.

Let's have a look at some gaming benchmarks.

Splinter Cell

Splinter Cell is a DirectX 8/9 title and can handle Pixel Shaders if your card supports it. The downside of this nice piece of software is that it has different modes for different classes of hardware. We designed a configuration that is nearly the same for all graphics cards, however any low-end graphics card that does not support Pixel Shaders will reproduce a slightly different score. Secondly Splinter Cell has two shadowing techniques, Projector and Buffer mode. We force Projector mode in high detail on all graphics cards. Again, graphics cards without shader capabilities will run into a problem as they do not support it. We are talking about GeForce4 MX and earlier models (excluding the GeForce 3 series) only. With that in mind, this software really is an excellent benchmark. Small sidenote, we are not using the standard timedemo's. Let's take a look at some of the benchmark numbers. Unlike some of the future games Splinter Cell doesnt use per-pixel lighting, so the framerate should be quite good even for owners of mid-end PCs.

First let me start by saying that measuring CPU and mainboard performance normally should be done at the lowest resolution possible. You'll notice that on most sites you'll get the results at 640x480 ect. While that is a very good method to produce static numbers to show performance differences I simple do not believe in them. I want you to look at real world performance, thus we run the system like you would do at home, at normal resolutions and normal settings.

CPU's differ, chipset platforms differ. We try to give you the big picture. It's really hard to compare graphics cards versus mainboards very well. It's obvious we are looking at state of the art results here, high-end systems.

Gaming however is where the AMD64 platform always has been very strong over Intel Pentium 4 solutions, the results show that, look at both the 3.6 GHz AA8XE  and 4000+ results in 1024x768. You are also platform dependant (the mainboard chipset), but this gives a good overview. At higher resolutions you will run into bottleneck, resulting that the framerate slowly becomes equal.

All in all, fantastic performance.

Chronicles of Riddick - Escape from Butcher Bay

Year 2004 finally delivered two of the most awaited and anticipated games: Half Life 2 and Doom 3. Before that Far Cry dropped the bombshell on the gaming industry, totally redefining graphics and gameplay standards. When we thought we had seen it all, Starbreeze and Vivendi delivered the unhyped and low profile game Chronicles Of The Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay. The game was first released on the Xbox without too much buzz, noise or publicity. The game was then ported to the PC with buffed up graphics. The game starts with Riddick taken to the prison. Riddick is supposed to be one of the most wanted criminals in the galaxy. Riddick is like an icon in the game. The most fearless, dashing and feared criminal in the whole galaxy. The storyline is not the same as that of the movie; in fact it's entirely different. It starts somewhere in the past in context to the two movies that we saw on the big screen.

Since Far Cry the standard of graphics has changed dramatically. Since then we have seen games like Doom 3 and Half Life 2, which set very high standards in graphics. This particular game closely resembles Doom 3. I personally thought that this game must be running on the Doom 3 engine when I first saw the screenshots in Guru3d forums a few months back. But this is not the Doom 3 engine. It's called Starbreeze Engine Technology © (2002 - 2004 Starbreeze AB.) And mind you it produces stunning graphics. The game is dark. But not scary pitch black as we saw in Doom 3. And darkness is the friend of Riddick in the game, instead of your enemy in Doom 3. Riddick gains the power to see in total darkness in the initial stages of the game.

You will need a pretty powerful machine to run this game at its full glory. The game has shader model profiles for different graphic adapters. So make sure you choose proper shader model before you start playing the game. On machines with Geforce 6 series of cards, the game auto detects Shader 2.0+ but this is unplayable on most machines even with the mighty 6800U graphics card. And many times the game will simply lock up. So make sure you set the Shader Model to 2.0 or lower according to the setup.

Very experimental we include the first Riddick results. We forced the Shader Model to 2.0 here.

Very few results though as we are still working on another time demo (we record them ourselves). For those that don't know, a timedemo is simply recording a piece of the game that you play. That piece that you recorded is then used to playback that scene. This way you can objectively measure the framerate with any graphics card, of course with the same parameters and settings.

Mind you that the results of the Athlon 64 4000+ are of course always faster as it's a faster CPU.

I included these results though as you can see where it places the game versus these graphics cards. The lighting effects are very good and real looking. All models cast shadows properly. Gun modeling is also good. And the game uses some 3rd person views, especially when you are in conversation, climbing onto boxes, hanging on to something or when you are climbing ladders. During this you will notice how well the Riddick is modeled and how good and natural his body movements are. This really shows how well the game engine is working.