Splinter Cell is a very slow-paced game which places a great emphasis on
slowly sneaking around in the dark. As such, when running the timedemo, I
elected to keep the Shadow Level setting at high, as Splinter Cell wouldn't be
the same game without the sweet and important shadow effects. Shadow Mode was
left at the Buffer setting, which is the default setting for the GeForce class
of cards and is the recommended setting by Ubisoft. The settings I modified for
the various tests are the Shadow Resolution and Effects Quality settings. The
Shadow Resolution setting was set at High for the first two rounds of testing
then lowered to Medium for the last maps. The Effects Quality setting varied
from Very High to Medium.
Splinter Cell Benchmark Results
Since Splinter Cell's focus is slow and quiet spying over the all-out-action
we're accustomed to seeing in the first person shooter genre, the game's
performance is considered playable at much lower FPS than is typically
considered acceptable for smooth performance when playing first-person shooters.
The second and third map (1_1_2_Tbilisi and 2_2_1_Kalinatek) have similar performance results which allows the game to
be silky smooth at almost all times at 1600x1200 with the High/Very High settings for
Shadow Resolution and Effects Quality. The Beyond3D Caspian Oil takes a slightly
higher toll on the card as the level truly stresses the pixel shader paths of
the card, bringing the average FPS into the high 20's range at 1600x1200. Since
this is among the toughest levels of the game for the card, we see that the 5950
Ultra is capable of providing smooth gameplay with whatever Splinter Cell can
through at it.
Final Fantasy XI - Benchmark Program 2
It has finally arrived: an MMORPG placed in the Final Fantasy setting. With
an extremely deep history of classics on a variety of consoles and a few notable
PC-ports, Final Fantasy has a huge following of rabid fans. However, most of
these fans are console-toting players which may not have as great a fascination
with upgrading their PCs as say, an FPS fan. As such, Square Enix released and
updated version of their benchmarking program to allow these players to test the
capabilities of their PCs and gauge whether their PCs are up to the task.
Fileplanet has a page associating the score generated by the benchmark
program with the expected in-game performance.
Final Fantasy XI - Benchmark Program 2 Results
AA and AF seem to have little effect on the performance of the FF benchmark.
It would be safe to say the benchmark isn't limited by the GeForce 5950 Ultra
until the higher AA and AF settings come into play. The image quality at both
6XS and 8X was astoundingly crisp and clear. I'll definitly have to check out
the perfomrance of that game with these settings in the future.
Tron 2.0 Demo
A very cool little game with an extremely unique art concept wherein the
characters and levels are composed solely of various shades of black and
illuminescent borders. The above screenshot displays how truly illuminescent the
borders can be. The overall effect is extremely cool and brings much more to the
setting of the game than rather drab textures in the Medium Detail setting. I
wouldn't even consider playing the game at any setting other than the High
Detail setting. Doing so wouldn't do justice to the game and all the cool
glowing effects provided by the Lithtech engine.
Tron 2.0 Demo Results
Runs of the game were performed on the second level of the initial Tron 2.0
Demo (found here). Once again, we've maxed-out all the settings to stress the
card out. The runs consisted of commencing at the position displayed above,
entering a few of the rooms along the way back towards the beginning of the
level with floating platforms. Each run lasted 83 seconds.
I didn't bother testing with AF enabled as the game is extremely dark and
makes little use of textures. Whereas the illuminescent edges represent
everything in the environment, placing a higher importance on crisp clean lines
provided by AA. The 5950 Ultra allows us to crank up all the details and still
run the game at 1600x1200 with 4X AA. Sweet.
