e-GeFORCE4 Ti4400 - Benchmarks
(Page 3 of 5 )
e-GeFORCE4 Ti 4400
Benchmarking: Would a video card review truly be right if it didn't start off with some good old Quake3 Benchmarks? It's still the industry standard and one of the most widely used gaming benchmarks to compare video card and system performance. For your benefit, I have benchmarked Q3 in several
different resolutions and levels of FSAA. All tests were run at High Quality game settings and default video card settings. Here is the test system that we'll be using today.
Hardware
CPU - Intel Northwood P4 1.6A @2.13GHz
Mobo - Abit BD7 RAID
Memory - 512MB Kingmax PC2400
HD - Maxtor 40G ATA/133
Sound Card - CL SB Audigy
Software
Video Card Drivers - nVidia Detonator 4 - 30.82's (WHQL Certified as of August 7th, 2002)
OS - WindowsXP Professional
Right from the get go you can tell that the eVGA GF4 Ti 4400 is kicking ass. Over 100FPS with 2x FSAA @1280 x 1024 is nothing short of astounding. Not only does the game itself look absolutely incredible, it plays very smooth as well. Additionally, we see Quincunx @1600 x 1200 resolution running a nice 75FPS. I think Quincunx is really under rated but it's a personal favorite setting for me. You get nearly the equivalent visual quality of 4 times Full Screen Anti-Aliasing. Yet at less than the cost of 2X performance wise. Is that a bargain or what? Once again, thanks to the IDSoftware crew for blessing us with one of the longest enduring benchmarks of our time. I'd also like to thank the crew responsible for Q3Bench. Simply the best tool for benchmarking Q3. It makes our life MUCH easier. You can currently pickup this program @Guru3D.
Now lets run some Return to Castle Wolfenstein benches. Yes, it still runs off the Q3 engine. But we all know the Q3 code has been tuned up a bit for newer video cards and looks spectacular as well. In fact, here is a quote from the RTCW Fact Sheet found at the Wolfenstein Center.
"Founded upon the revolutionary QUAKE III Arena technology, the game features unparalleled texture graphics, fogging, artificial intelligence, special effects, animated shaders, reflection mapping, and dynamic lighting.
Visuals - Many texture maps in the game are created from actual digital photographs of walls, stone, brick, terrain, and wood found on location in France and Germany. Much of the castle architecture is taken from actual floor plans of European castles."
Running the RtCW Checkpoint demo, we see quite a few less frames than we did in Quake 3. Again, all game settings were at High Quality. Still showing VERY respectable numbers up to 1280 x 1024 with 2X FSAA. Once we kick in 4X, the card starts to bog down quite a bit. Some will tell you anything over 30fps is playable. I'm here to tell you it isn't. ESPECIALLY in a First Person Shooter! You need every frame you can get in order to have an edge over the enemy. Still, over 100fps @1024 x 768 with 2X FSAA enabled is very nice. Easily playable and very smooth. 1600 x 1200 really put the smack down, especially in 2X FSAA and above. Hardly anyone plays at this resolution but it's like having a super fast sports car. You may not go 200mph. But just knowing you can go that fast is half the fun. With the emerging ATI RADEON 9700 and NV30 in the works, we may very well be playing games like this at a higher level of FSAA @1600 x 1200 over 100fps. But as of right now, we have not made it to that point just yet.
Jedi Knight II anyone?
Next: More benchmarks >>
More Video Cards Articles
More By SPeeD
