Review: GeForce FX5600 Ultra rev2

Now unlike the previous 2 benchmarks which test DirectX 8 capabilities, including hardware shader performance, Quake 3 is more old school. DirectX 6 like, in terms of the techniques it uses to render its scenes, this test is more indicative of older game performance. Baseline first, you know the drill.

With the shader hardware sat inactive (unless the driver elects to use it for common rendering situations that Q3 throws up), it's all about core pixel pushing and the memory bandwidth of the card. The NVIDIA takes the lead.

With IQ enabled, it's all pretty much alike as far as our two midrange cards are concerned. If older games are your thing, both will do equally as well on the basis of this result, and you get to play with the eye candy on too.

Lots of pixels to push now.

Eek, and the NVIDIA card again looks more optimised in the high resolution case, and it's memory bandwidth advantage definitely doesn't hurt here.

PD graph just to confirm any niggling doubts.

Just as we suspected, less of a performance hit for FX5600 Ultra as things get nasty. Overall, good performance from both however.