Sub-$200 Video Card Roundup - April 2002

CPU Scaling under Unreal Performance Test 2002

To kick off our CPU scaling tests we use the Unreal Performance Test 2002 with our barrage of CPUs. The graph is fairly self explanatory so we'll only point out interesting trends.

If you look at the slowest CPU speed (800MHz) you'll realize that with the exception of the GeForce3 and GeForce3 Ti 200, the GeForce4 Ti 4200 can offer a decent performance improvement over any of the competing cards in future games based on the Unreal Engine.

It's also interesting to note that with the exception of the GeForce4 Ti 4200, the rest of the contenders don't really scale well with CPU speed. After the 1.2GHz mark pretty much all of the cards are running on flat scaling curves meaning that they've run out of juice.

Luckily we won't see this strenuous of a situation for some time to come, let's have a look at some currently available games.