Our Benchmarks List

The chief goal of this review is to provide some bearings for people who are shopping today for a new graphics card (as a standalone device or as part of a new PC). We wanted to give this review more practical value by adding to it as many popular games as possible so that you had a full picture of performance of currently available graphics cards. 26 games of various genres, 2 semi-synthetic and 2 synthetic benchmarks were used, giving a total of 30 test applications. The full list follows below.

First Person 3D Shooters:

• Battlefield 2
• Brothers in Arms
• The Chronicles of Riddick
• Close Combat: First to Fight
• Counter-Strike: Source
• Doom 3
• Far Cry
• F.E.A.R. Multiplayer Demo
• Half-Life 2
• Painkiller: Battle Out of Hell
• Pariah
• Project: Snowblind
• Unreal Tournament 2004

Third Person 3D Shooters:

• Hitman: Contracts
• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
• Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
• Thief: Deadly Shadows
• Vampires the Masquerade: Bloodlines

Simulators:

• Colin McRae Rally 2005
• FlatOut
• Lock On: Modern Air Combat
• Pacific Fighters

Strategies:

• Act of War: Direct Action
• Perimeter
• Stronghold 2
• Warhammer 40.000: Dawn of War

Semi-synthetic Benchmarks:

• Aquamark3
• Final Fantasy XI Official Benchmark 3

Synthetic Benchmarks:

• Futuremark 3DMark03, build 360
• Futuremark 3DMark05, build 120

We think these tests suffice to make this review helpful as a shopping guide. You may note that 3D shooters with first-person view have the most positions in the list. We think it proper since it’s in this genre than more new games come out and new 3D technologies are polished there, too.

PCI Express platforms are steadily ousting AGP ones from the market and upcoming graphics solutions are unlikely to support the latter interface, so we decided to include only PCI Express devices as the most likely candidates for purchase.