Benchmarks II
|
Our first practical game for benchmarking purposes will be the OpenGL-based Serious Sam 2, The Second Encounter. Lovely visuals and an excellent benchmarking mode make it an excellent all-round graphics card test. For comparison purposes, we'll be benchmarking the Sierra De Chiapas demo, one that is included in the publicly available demonstration version of SS2. Quality setting are enabled. However, the standard anisotropic filtering is switched off till we need it. Firstly, no anti-aliasing or anistropic filtering.
Again, notice the lack of improved on what seems to be a CPU-limited resolution of 1024x768x32. The ASUS V8460 demolishes the Geforce3 Ti 500 in this practical benchmark, giving fluid frame-rates at 1600x1200x32. Those of you with large monitors will rejoice at this. The improved anti-aliasing logic, dubbed Accuview, has received praise for its efficient algorithm. We've previously seen it take a minimal performance hit once 2x AA is applied. Let's investigate this with respect to the ASUS Geforce4. So, the same demo, but with 2x FSAA applied.
We managed 130.1fps with the overclocked ASUS Ti 4600 (318/740) with no anti-aliasing, we manage 124.9fps with 2x FSAA enabled. The 5fps or so drop is testament to the excellent FSAA logic. Notice how large the corresponding drop is for the Geforce3 Ti 500, from 110.4fps to 73.5fps. The sheer brute force of the overclocked ASUS ensures that we manage an average of 50fps at 1600x1200x32 with 2x FSAA, impressive going. Let's turn up the heat with 4x FSAA.
As the benchmark becomes almost totally card-limited, overclocking pays greater and greater dividends. Our Ti 500 simply refused to benchmark at 1600x1200x32 with 4x FSAA, hardly surprising, though. Anistropic filtering is all about making games look prettier by rendering crisper textures. These have historically come with a heavy cost on the Geforce range of video cards. Let's investigate performance under 4-tap aniso.
The ASUS Ti 4600 is head-and-shoulders above the Geforce3 Ti 500 when considered from an anti-aliasing perspective. The gap with anisotropic filtering enabled, however, is nowhere near as dramatic. Maybe a driver revision or two are needed in this department ?. |
