Review By John Grabski - June 11, 2004 Edited By Ed Piotrowski
SPLINTER CELL
The dynamic lighting and shadow effects in the original Splinter Cell gave us a sneak peak of the special effects that the next generation of games will begin to adopt. As Splinter Cell is a game based on stealth, the management of one's shadow provides a unique aspect to gameplay. The original Splinter Cell was followed-up with Pandora Tomorrow, which is also based on the technology of the Unreal Warfare engine.
Splinter Cell
The popular Caspian Oil Refinery level was used to test the performance of Splinter Cell.
Results
Splinter Cell is fairly kind to the BFG 5900XT OC when AF is enabled as effective visual results are produced with a low performance hit. High frame rates are not a requirement when playing Splinter Cell due to its pace. All resolutions tested performed adequately with 8X AF enabled.
Preferred Setting: 1280x1024 with no AA and 8X AF
ENEMY TERRITORY
Although not as advanced as Call of Duty, Enemy Territory features a variety of rendering improvements over Quake 3 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein, which include increased polygon counts, foilage shaders, advanced decals, and external lightmaps.
Enemy Territory
Enemy Territory was benchmarked using the Railgun demo with the highest in-game graphics settings and sound set to the lowest quality.
Results
Due to the number of additional players in the Railgun timedemo this benchmark is somewhat CPU bound. However, it tends to be indicative of real-world performance and the BFG 5900XT OC offers excellent gameplay in this team-based World War 2 first person shooter.
Preferred Setting: 1280x1024 with 4X AA and 8X AF
AMP II ENGINE DEMO
The AMP II engine demo, developed by 4D Rulers Software, contains features that are starting to take foothold in the newest games such as Far Cry and the upcoming Doom 3. AMP II was specifically designed for rendering indoor corridors.
Per-Pixel Lighting
Specular Lighting
Bump Mapping
Stencil Shadowing
Projection Textures
Fog Flares
Shader System
Particle System
Amp Engine Demo
The AMP II engine was used in the value game "Secret Service: Security Breach", which was released with little fanfare. Tests were run at maximum quality settings.
Results
The specular effects and lighting really take their toll on the BFG 5900XT OC, and as this demo shows, the engine was obviously optimized for use at 1024x768 with no AA or AF. At 45 frames per second, walking through the corridors provided a perspective on things to come.
Preferred Setting: 1024x768 with No AA and No AF. Although not indicative of Doom 3 performance, this demo does bring to light special graphics effects that will be adopted by the next generation of games.
