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Unreal Tournament 2004
Added into our wide benchmark suite is Unreal Tournament 2004. The developers of UT2004 didn't want to split hairs with this game. It is still using the same engine and the majority of gameplay elements will be very familiar to players of the 2003 version. If you hated the first game, you'll probably hate this.
Sorry, but that's how it is. This large-scale, vehicle-focused game concentrates and focuses the action so that 12 players can have as much fun as 32. It includes several different gameplay modes including Onslaught, where each team has a power core that they need to protect. Between the teams' power cores are a number of smaller power nodes scattered across the map.
Buggies, hovercraft, tanks, trucks, space fighters, air fighters all feature prominently in Unreal Tournament 2004, and huge maps have been made to accommodate them.
What we customized for Unreal Tournament 2004 was the configuration, which is now set at the highest possible image quality. Next to that we recorded a really ridiculously-intensive-on-the-system time demo. The results then are compiled to an average, which is you average framerate. Again with default settings the framerate on your home machine would be somewhat higher as we go for the best possible settings available.
On this page we'll quickly run through a couple of severely CPU limited games. Therefore only one chart per game, in all charts 4xAA and 8xAF is enabled at default for all cards.
It's in reality the game is displaying some very nasty CPU limitation here, yes even with an Athlon 64 4000+ processor and this card! AA and AF quality settings is what we need to focus on here... the graphics card will chew apart the game. No problemo.
Halo: Combat Evolved
Those of you who haven't heard about HALO raise your hands please. you?! What do you mean you haven't heard about it?! Oh you're still gaming on a Dreamcast; daddy is a game reviewer, you say, and can't afford to buy you anything? Oh well, I guess we can let this one slide.
HALO was probably the biggest and certainly the most prominent launch title for Microsoft's Xbox console. You also probably know that Bungie actually originally intended to publish the game on the PC, but were kindly asked to change their mind, well ... bought by MS and help the birth of the Xbox. After two years of waiting, PC gamers can finally sink their teeth into the PC version of the game.
In Halo, you don the armor of the Master Chief; a war-hardened soldier that only comes out when the going gets really tough. The Earth is at war with a mysterious race called the Covenant and as the game opens, a Halcyon-class cruiser from Earth, the Pillar of Autumn, has dropped out of warp badly damaged. Worse yet, the Autumn is being pursued by a Covenant fleet. The Master Chief is given the mandate to get the ships main computer construct, Cortana, away from the cruiser as the captain crashes the battered Pillar of Autumn on a strange ring-shaped object (later to be known as Halo). You must get Cortana off of the Autumn and then keep yourself alive long enough figure out what secrets Halo hides.
Now, with the game in public release, most of you will find the performance to be still pretty demanding.The game's use of pixel shader 2.0 causes a lot of disbelieve for Nvidia GeForce FX owners. On the bright side, Nvidia scrambled to optimize their drivers and version 52.16, which we used in our benchmarks, has some significant performance enhancements over the older 45.XX series.
Bungie decided to upgrade the engine in the PC version to support Pixel Shader 2.0 effects instead of the Pixel Shader 1.1 effects found on the Xbox version. This is noticeable in better shiny armor, water effects and better looking grass. To run Halo on the PC requires a pretty decent system.
Halo is less CPU stringent and more graphics core dependant making it an excellent benchmark. Here we show a variety of results with the 7800 GTX being a very strong performer. The difference between a 6800 GT and this card is not that big actually. Again very satisfactory results.
Do we dare? Yes let's look at RTCW.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
This game is powered with a highly optimized Quake III engine. We tested the graphics card with high detail settings and of course a heavy duty time-demo.
Powered by the Quake III Arena engine, the Wolfenstein universe explodes with the kind of epic environments, A.I., firepower and cinematic effects that only a game created by true masters can deliver. The dark reich's closing in. The time to act is now. Evil prevails when good men do nothing.
A highly decorated Army Ranger recruited into the Office of Secret Actions (OSA) tasked with escaping and then returning to Castle Wolfenstein in an attempt to thwart Heinrich Himmler's occult and genetic experiments. Himmler believes himself to be a reincarnation of a 10th century dark prince, Henry the Fowler, also known as Heinrich. Through genetic engineering and the harnessing of occult powers, Himmler hopes to raise an unstoppable army to level the Allies once and for all.
That being said, RTCW boasts very nice textures, impressive effects and fantastic character models, even for game this dated. A lot of people still enjoy it very much.
RTCW is the oldest game in our test suite and therefore extremely CPU limited. Your graphics cards can chew up this game alive while still having room to spare. Let's make it a bit more difficult for the graphics cards and have look at 4xAA and 8xAF listings:
I can't stress enough how CPU limited this game is :) 100% playable, no matter what quality setting you would use.
