Benchmarks II
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Our first in-depth analysis will centre around 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. Firstly, with no anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering. 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.
Once more the MSI Ti 4200 shows the Geforce3 Ti 500 a clean pair of heels. This is impressive considering that the clock speeds are relatively similar. We can deduce that improved occlusion culling has some bearing on our results. The overclocked Ti 4200 just eclipses the standard Ti 4600 once more. Now on to 2x F.S.A.A for improved image quality. I suspect the 64MB of on-board RAM might be an impediment here.
Whilst F.S.A.A is one of the Geforce4 Ti series of cards' strengths, the lower clocked Ti 4200, somewhat understandably, begins to suffer as we raise the resolution, falling 26% behind the Ti 4600 at 1600x1200x32. Still, it comfortably beats out the Geforce3 Ti 500 at every resolution. Overclocking our card brings the performance to near Ti 4600 levels. Let's put the hurt on with 4x F.S.A.A.
Here is where the 64MB MSI Ti 4200 begins to suffer a little. The sheer raw power needed for 4x F.S.A.A calculations requires an optimum buffer size of 128MB or greater, the complexity is just too much for 64MB to handle efficiently. The MSI Ti 4200 couldn't satisfactorily run at 1600x1200x32 with 4x F.S.A.A enabled. It is a rather academic exercise at that resolution, though. Once again, it is firmly sandwiched between the other two test cards. How about 4-tap anisotropic filtering thrown in for good measure. ?
The first aspect to note here is that the Ti 4200 loses out to the Geforce3 Ti 500 for the first time here. At standard speeds, its performance is slightly below that of the Ti 500. I believe this to be due to the lack of driver optimisation present for the Geforce4 Ti series of cards. The overclocked performance, however, is excellent. |
