Benchmarks: Quake 4, Far Cry
Quake 4
Let's start with Quake 4. Why? Why not!
The two current-gen add-in-boards kick off our testing regime by showing that they're ahead of the low-end GeForce 6 series add-in-board and indeed the integrated solutions. ATI's X1300 Pro is 12% faster than MSI's NX7300GS.
The X1300 Pro increases its lead to 27% here. However, the NX7300GS has an average FPS that should make Quake 4 playable at this resolution. It'll certainly be smoother than the anaemic 6200 and atrocious figures for the integrated GPUs.
Far Cry
Crytek's new shooter, with its amazing graphics draws ever closer, but for now we stick with the tried and tested, yet still demanding, Far Cry.
In Far Cry, the 7300 GS is still behind. This time the X1300 Pro is 35% nippier. Once again, however, framerates should be playable. Gigabyte's GeForce 6200 is worth a mention here too, almost mustering a high enough framerate for half-decent game play, but not quite.
Converse to Quake 4, in Far Cry, increasing the resolution decreases the X1300 Pro's lead over MSI's NX7300GS, albeit only to 32%. MSI's card totters on the edge of what we'd consider the lowest tolerable framerate, and remember that these figures are averages, so dips to lower than this are inevitable, resulting in nasty, nasty stuttering. We don't like stutter, no sir.
