High End Tests: Tourney
In this section, we will be taking a look at Ultra Quality performance, as well as various high resolutions and antialiasing settings. These are the only cards that can handle 1600x1200 or antialiasing. Though jaggies aren't a big problem (the artists designed the game very well with many low contrast edges), eliminating these minor annoyances is a luxury afforded to those with these latest generation power houses.To clarify an issue we've noticed across the board, Ultra Quality runs perfectly fine on current generation high end hardware. Yes, the game recommends >500 MB of nice fast graphics RAM, as do we if one's intention is to play through the single player game. But, it is very important to note that all the multiplayer maps we've played on in the past few hours have been small enough to avoid the massive swapping that occurs when moving between parts of the world on the single player map.
This really means two things to us. When 512MB cards come around, we won't need any heavier artillery on the GPU side to tackle rendering the game. It also means that Deathmatch players can easily benefit from the Ultra Quality setting immediately.
Not all tests are without problems, and this time we experienced some issues with our 6800 Ultra Extreme part. We noticed visual artifacts as we were running our AA tests. These kept getting worse as time went on, and not even letting the card cool down would help fix the problem. Eventually, our system rebooted while we were testing and wouldn't get through another benchmark run. John Carmack has spoken of possible issues when overclocking a graphics card with Doom 3, and this may or may not have an impact on factory overclocked parts. We will absolutely keep our ears open and our test beds working to try to determine if this is just an isolated random GPU death, or if there is some other evil at work.
Another intersting observation we've made is that if your 6800 Ultra Extreme can handle the game, Ultra Quality at 1600x1200 with 4xAA is a playable reality. But enough talk; feast on the numbers.
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Xtian - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
I think it is about time to benchmark using common resolution settings. Most people with LCD screens want to run their games at the native1280x1024 resolution of their LCDs.
So, will my 128MB radeon 9700 (non pro) be able to run the game at 1280x1024 ? Anyone who knows ?
/Xtian
gmenfan - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
How do you run the timedemo included with the game? Also, does anybody know the command to raise the refresh rate.Pollock - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
I'm getting very depressed...I have a GeForce2 MX that I got for free from my friend...Drayvn - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
Would you be able to use the 4.9 beta catalyst drivers, supposedly they are for the doom3 performance issues?RuStYwAvE - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
Why do you guys want to see the benchmarks on a gf4 4200 and ati 8500.4200 is slightly underclock 4400 so subtract a few framerates and the ati 8500 should perform better then a ati 9200 since it has a higher core and memory speed.
Also i think the old geforce3 and geforce3 ti 500 is much better then a geforce fx 5200 and is equilivalent to a 5200 ultra and 5600 just under a geforce4 4200.
Bonesdad - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
All this and you didn't test the much loved GF4 4200??? I believe this card to be much more popular than the 4400 and I also believe many more of us currently own one...implicit1 - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
I think something is wrong in the High Quality Med Res benchmark as well. The 9800xt is being beaten by the 9800pro, maybe the numbers are switched around?cliffa3 - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
in response to the laptop question, if it burned out a vid card, don't play with it sitting on your lap...geez.Seriously tho, the thinkpads are an awesome line...the only way to go imo. You might want to wait until the mobility 9800s come out if you want a real desktop replacement for gaming...don't know if they'll show up in the thinkpad line anytime soon (or at all). I know there was a news clip a while back on anandtech about it, you might want to dig and find that.
DerekWilson - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
VortigernRed -- you were exactly right -- copied the wrong numbers over in my sleep haze.Its fixed now.
Lucid484 - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
What about my GeForce 2 Ti!!!!! Which is OC to 300CPU/505RAM ...eh id prolly only get 5 fps anyway!