Fall 2003 Video Card Roundup - Part 2: High End Shootout
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on October 7, 2003 5:30 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
GunMetal IQ
GunMetal is a game somewhat in the tradition of Robotech (giant robots that can turn into planes). This is a DX9 game that uses VS2.0, but only PS1.1 (PS2.0 is one of the biggest advantages of DX9 and isn't employed here). Yeti studios was kind enough to provide the world with a benchmark featuring 2 different scenarios, both of which we used for this article.
One of the more interesting features of this benchmark is that its impossible to turn off anisotropic filtering and antialiasing must be set at 2x or higher. The argument is that these effects are becoming necessary for higher image quality in games and playing without them will become a thing of the past in the future. In fact, there are quite a few next generation games that are not compatible with driver AA settings (either because they implement their own AA, or they don't do AA at all). Apparently, NVIDIA has known issues with this game, but after going through it plenty of times we really didn't notice anything going wrong. Take a look:
NVIDIA 45.23
NVIDIA 52.14
ATI Catalyst 3.7
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Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
yea I agree with what #3 said..hardly any commentary on the IQ... and If I'm not mistaken, aren't the new cats going to be out tomorrow???? If so, you might as well do the whole thing over again...Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
#3, go away you fanboy. There was absolutely no IQ difference between the CAT 3.7 and 52.14 drivers.Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
i'm sure intel will be happy to hear that you 'upgraded' your prescott to an FX.dvinnen - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
errr, a lot of the piture links aren't wrking, like teh halo iq one and TR:AoDAnonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
Um...Why was there nothing noting the difference between nVidia and ATI's in the IQ section? nVidia looks absolutely horrid compared to the ATI.
AgaBooga - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
I saw more opinions in this article leaning towards Nvidia, especially around the Tomb Raider benchmarks. More specifically, starting with the page regarding compilers. I liked this articles, but there could have been less opinionated viewpoints on this. Also, it might be better if we get names of authors with what they typed, so we know who typed what, because some of this sure didn't sound like something Mr. Shimpi has written in the past...Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
i'm still reading..............