Unreal Tournament 2004 provides the gamer with plenty of fast-paced action and is one of the leading graphics engines in use today. Epic and the Unreal community have continued to support fans of the game by releasing free bonus maps and community packs.

UT2004 Demo

Tests were conducted with the assistance of the UMark benchmark program, which is capable of playing back botmatches in the demo version of UT2004.

UMark Benchmark Program

The following results are from the CTF-Bridge Of Fate map, which takes place in an indoor setting. In addition to default core and memory clock speeds, overclocked results are also provided.

UT2004 Demo Performance

Keep in mind that the results are based on the demo of UT2004, which has normal as the highest texture detail level. The full version of UT2004 contains four additional levels of texture detail that enhance image quality at the expense of performance. The UT2004 demo can be downloaded at this page.

The Gun Metal benchmark from Yeti Studios contains two benchmarks that make use of NVIDIA's Cg as well as Vertex Shader 2.0 and Pixel Shader 1.1.

Gun Metal

The benchmark enables 2X antialiasing and anisotropic texture filtering by default. I used 4X antialiasing and also compared performance to Sapphire's Radeon 9600XT.

Gun Metal Performance

With 4X antialiasing, both of these mid-range graphics cards were overwhelmed by Gun Metal. However, they also completed both benchmarks with no problems.

The required performance in Far Cry is largely dictated by the style of gameplay. A higher average frame rate is desirable during situations when gameplay is based on the fast-paced action of a first person shooter compared to the slower-paced stealth mode used in games like Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell and Thief.

Like many gamers, I've been spending quite a bit of time enjoying Far Cry. From what I have heard an upcoming patch will have much better benchmarking capabilities. Until then, I used the benchmark of the Fort map that has been in circulation.

Far Cry

Having had good success playing Far Cry with the Radeon 9600XT, I chose to compare it against the Inno3D GeForce FX 5700 Ultra. Being a good performer for a mid-range product, the Radeon 9600XT is an excellent candidate for comparing performance.

Far Cry Performance

I have found Far Cry to be playable as long as I maintain an average of at least 40 FPS. Using 40 FPS as a reference point, we find a number of settings that will provide enjoyable gameplay. Overclocking the Inno3D GeForce FX 5700 Ultra resulted in an increase of 2 FPS.

Next Page: Synthetic Benchmarks and Conclusion