Games Benchmarks

Test System
AMD Athlon XP 2000+
Gainward GeForce 4 Ti4200
512MB PC2700 Crucial RAM
Seagate 60GB 7200rpm HDD
Hercules Muse LT
Abit KX7-333R motherboard
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition

Games
Unreal Tournament 2003
No One Lives Forever 2 - A Spy in Harm's Way
Mafia
Age of Mythology
Morrowind
Warcraft III
Aquanox 2 Preview Version

We had DirectX 9.0 installed on the PC for these benchmarks. The Nvidia drivers that we used were the latest official drivers (41.09). We didn't install any VIA 4in1 drivers and just used the ones that come built into Windows XP. Windows XP is the out of the box version. The service pack (SP1) was not installed. We decided to solely benchmark at the 1024x768 screen resolution, in 32bit colour, because for a majority of gamers this is the performance sweet spot. This resolution is also of primary importance if you have a TFT screen as most of these have 1024x768 as their native resolution. Of course you can gather that lower resolutions will increase performance whilst higher resolutions will decrease performance. No anti-aliasing was used in these benchmarks.

Unreal Tournament 2003 is perhaps the first in a new line of next generation FPS games. System requirements for this game were thought to be monsterous but the above benchmark shows that our setup can handle it at 1024x768. Antalus is primarily an outdoor environment and the framerate is not quite as high as it would be in a more confined, indoor environment.

Unreal Tournament 2003 - Serpentine

Serpentine is an indoor map and you can see that it yields a higher framerate than the Antalus map. It is worth noting that both maps produced ultra-smooth performance and although the minimum framerate for both is below the coveted 60fps this minium was seldom achieved, in fact it was only reached in hectic shoot-outs. For both of these maps the texture, character, physics and details were set to normal whilst the world detail was set to high.

In terms of looks and performance the latest Lithtech engine that powered NOLF 2 is simply sensational. Even at the 1024x768 resolution with all the details maxed out the games performance test recommended that we up the resolution. Throughout the framerate simply flew on our system. Very impressive indeed. Let's hope the Lithtech engine is used in far more games.

Unlike the previous titles Mafia is a third person shooter. The framerate in these doesn't tend to be as high and the above benchmark certainly proves this. Performance at 1024x768 was generally good. There was the odd bit of slowdown but there was nothing to spoil the enjoyment of the game. It goes to show that the quality of the game engine is paramount. Mafia didn't look anywhere near as good as NOLF 2 and simply couldn't match it for performance.

In a RTS game the framerate isn't as important as in a FPS. That fact didn't stop the performance of the Age of Mythology being simply sensational though. Just look at those figures! This game engine is very impressive and our system just couldn't be slowed down at all. It's fair to say that this game could be run in far higher resolutions.

Everyone goes on about how Doom III will require massive system resources but one title that has been out a while now that is a serious system resource hog is Morrowind. The free roaming RPG demands a CPU far in excess of the quickest available and I doubt that 60fps in an outdoor environment, with maximum details, is reachable on any system you can currently buy or assemble. Having said that though even though the framerate is low in an outdoor environment the game doesn't fell like it's slowing down too much. We stuck to the default details for this benchmark and the above framerate is whilst you are in a town centre and not whilst roaming the wilderness which would yield a somewhat improved framerate.

Morrowind (indoors)

There is a noticeable improvement in the framerate when you are in an indoor environment. This isn't surprising really when you consider the complicated nature of the outdoor environments. Morrowind is a game that should be used for Benchmarks for at least the next 2 years.

Another RTS game and again the performance is superb. Warcraft III can be run in all it's glory on the test system. There isn't any slowdown at all and even though the minimum framerate is just below the desired 60fps you just cannot tell that from playing the game.

To finish on we'll look at a future title. Aquanox was a beautiful game in it's time and this sequel is even better. In fact the basis of the new Aquamark 3 benchmark tool that will be available in March is basically the same engine that is used in Aquanox 2. The framerate can be considered low but we are talking about a next generation game engine that could probably make use of far more than the 64MB of RAM than our GeForce 4 had available.

I haven't tried to pull any punches with this article. I could have simply selected titles that gave 100+fps, and believe me there are many. The games selected are all current and what most people would want to play. For 95% of new games the review PC that we have worked with here will be good for at least the next 12 months and probably 18 months if you are not interested in games such as Doom III. Of course titles such as Doom III will again move the goal posts for FPS fans and if you have this in mind then you may consider ugrading to the lastest AMD Athlon XP2700+ CPU, the nForce 2 motherboard and a beefier graphics card which will be something like a GeForce FX. Of course these premium pieces of hardware will come at a much bigger price but will last you longer. It's all about the games you want to play and I hope this article has given you some indication of what is possible on a fairly small budget.

Finally I'd like to give a big apology to AMD and Gainward for the lateness of this article. It should have appeared last September but because of other committments, a plethora of game reviews that didn't cease until Christmas, it never did. The one plus of the lateness though is that some of the most recent games have been benchmarked. This wouldn't have been possible in September 2002.

A special thanks to AMD for providing the Athlon XP processor, to Gainward for providing the GeForce4 Ti4200 and to Crucial for providing the PC 2700 DDR RAM.