New to our Direct3D benchmarking arsenal is Mercedes-Benz Truck Racing which was developed by Synetic. MBTR supports a variety of graphics features including perspective correction, reflections, high resolution textures, mipmapping, and even triple buffering. All in all, it's very entertaining game to play and the graphics are superb.

FSAA Disabled - 1280x960	FSAA Disabled - 640x480
2x2 FSAA - 640x480	3x3 FSAA - 640x480

Notice that the image on the top left, which was taken at a resolution of 1280x960, illustrates the effects of aliasing. As expected, 3x3 looks very clean, but its impact on performance in MBTR is huge with the GeForce2 MX and GTS.

The following images are from the entire scene. Note that the frame per second readout are not indicative of the performance I got based on the final MBTR demo. These screenshots were taked from the intial demo.

FSAA Disabled - 1280x960	FSAA Disabled - 640x480
2x2 FSAA - 640x480	3x3 FSAA - 640x480

The benchmark results are based on the default settings for the TNT2/GeForce configuration and sound enabled. Additional graphics options are enabled when using the TNT2/GeForce configuration over the default Direct3D device. Note that triple buffering was enabled which requires additional graphics memory for FSAA. The final demo of MBTR was used.

Mercedes-Benz Truck Racing Graphics Settings

I used to be fluent in German as both my mother and grandparents are German. I've lost much of what I learned over the years however.

Mercedes-Benz Truck Racing Performance - 16-Bit Color

The GeForce2 MX hangs in there with the GeForce2 GTS and Ultra until 3x3 FSAA is used. The GeForce2 Ultra clearly takes the lead here which is probably due to the extra memory requirements of using triple buffering. Notice that all three cards get about the same results at 1280x960 with no FSAA and at 640x480 with 2x2 FSAA which is to be expected.

MotoCross Madness II

Microsoft's Motocross Madness II is an excellent off-road motorcycle racing sim. A quick race around the track at a resolution of 1280x960 in 16-bit color yields 26fps on the GeForce2 MX. There's no official benchmark for Motocross Madness II. I just took a joyride around the track with three other cyclists.

FSAA Disabled - 640x480	3x3 FSAA - 640x480
FSAA Disabled - 640x480	3x3 FSAA - 640x480

Pressing the f key displays the frames per second which appears on the top right of the screen directly under the map of the track.

FSAA Disabled - 640x480	3x3 FSAA Enabled - 640x480

Graphics set to maximum quality with EAX sound enabled.

Motocross Madness II Performance - 16-Bit Color

The results of Motocross Madness II pretty much mirror those from MBTR. However, 2x2 FSAA enabled offers better performance than 1280x960 with no FSAA. Both the GeForce2 GTS and Ultra both pull their weight and get 30fps or more with 3x3 FSAA enabled.

Next Page: OpenGL Performance (SoF, MDK2)