X-bit labs

The Fastest Graphics Cards of Summer 2005: Ultimate Testing of 17 GPUs in 30 Games (page 20)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 09/09/2005 | 12:37 AM ]

Unreal Tournament 2004

Unreal Tournament 2004 is an old game and it is not a hard trial for modern graphics hardware. The participating cards have almost the same speeds in the "pure speed" mode, excepting the RADEON X700 and the GeForce 6600 among which the ATI solution is faster.

The “eye candy” mode allows comparing top-end graphics cards, too, but only in high resolutions. The RADEON X850/X800 cards have higher speeds than their lower-frequency competitors: the game not featuring any special technological tricks, the sheer speed of the GPU and the number of pixel pipelines determine the winner.

It’s different on the Metallurgy map: the GeForce 6800 Ultra competes with the RADEON X850 XT, and the GeForce 6800 GT/6800 with the RADEON X800 XL. The GeForce 6800 is even a little faster than the GeForce 6800 GT despite having fewer pixel pipelines. The only defeat NVIDIA suffers in this test is the GeForce 6600 losing to the RADEON X700. This map isn’t as large as Torlan and loads mostly the vertex processors of the card, so the frequency of the GPU is the main performance-influencing factor here.

The RADEON cards regain their advantage in the “eye candy” mode, but the RADEON X700 PRO still cannot overtake the GeForce 6600 GT. Since Unreal Tournament 2004 isn’t a very demanding game by today’s standards, only the RADEON X600 and GeForce 6600 don’t allow playing it with comfort in high resolutions of the “eye candy” mode.