DOOM 3
I feel that I'd be insulting your intelligence (and probably even your
grandmother's) by even hinting at a summary of what Doom 3 is or providing some
background. So, I won't. :)
Throughout this
review I will continue to stress its focus:
Examine how the
6800 can be equivalent to the Ultra in performance (in terms of
frames per second and percentage hit) albeit at obviously different resolution,
anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering settings.
One thing to note is that Doom 3's
provided timedemo (demo1) was used for these benchmarks. This is not totally
indicative of actual gameplay but it does an excellent job of stressing the
card. For all of these results the timedemo was first allowed to run once so
that the map would be loaded into memory. Next, three runs were recorded and an
average was taken to get the final results shown below. FRAPS was used to record
the minimum frame rate.
Doom 3
Doom 3 - 1024x768 - App AA/AF percentage value indicates
performance hit from the 6800 Ultra
Doom 3 - 1600x1200 - App AA/AF percentage value indicates
performance hit from the 6800 Ultra
As you can see, the Inno3D 6800 offers very acceptable
performance at 1024x768 even when compared to the 6800 Ultra by staying very
close to 60fps even at 4xAA and 8xAF. Due to Doom 3's atypically dark
environment (less contrast of edges than most games) anti-aliasing is highly
regarded as being much less necessary even by AA die-hards. Knowing this, it is
very promising to see that even at 1600x1200 the 6800 is in the 50~60fps
neighborhood without AA or AF applied. While taking a ~30% performance hit at
2xAA, the 6800 is still performing at an acceptable ~40fps although the minimum
frame rates are quite low. Most people like to see the minimum frame rates to
not drop below 30fps for first person shooter games but your opinion can/will
vary.
UNREAL TOURNAMENT 2004
I used 3DCenter.org's
highly stressful Primeval timedemo
since UT2K4 is a DirectX 8.1 title and I wanted to stress as much as possible.
This Primeval timedemo never seems to disappoint as it churns out a large amount
of geometry and still humbles even the 6800 Ultra.
NOTE: This Primeval timedemo is not indicative of "normal" gameplay in Unreal
Tournament 2004, it is very, very stressful.
Unreal Tournament 2004
Unreal Tournament 2004 - 1024x768 - CP
AA/AF percentage value indicates
performance hit from the 6800 Ultra
Unreal Tournament 2004 - 1600x1200 - CP
AA/AF percentage value indicates
performance hit from the 6800 Ultra
Right away it is clear that this timedemo does, in fact, flex its muscle on both
cards. It particularly demonstrates how the extra 128MB of memory on the Ultra
is of benefit regarding all of the texture memory required in this timedemo. The
four fewer pipelines on the 6800 also do not help its cause. Most other "normal" timedemos
result in 20fps to 30fps increases in the results above. That easily brings
both cards to performing extremely well under any of the above settings.
