Dooming Performance

Hell Level, Pure Mode

In our “hell” demo we did a bit of sightseeing in hell. We took a walk around lakes with lava and glanced on devil’s architectural “masterpieces”. We also had to combat with monsters and take a walk near a precipice. The demo contains quite some effects and complex geometry.

The GeForce 6800-series graphics cards provide astonishingly good results outperforming all RADEON X800-series products participated in this test in all resolutions. Surprisingly, the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra manages to beat the RADEON 9800 XT, bringing some hope to its owners.

Excellent performance of NVIDIA-based products seem to be conditioned by the fact that the GeForce FX and GeForce 6 chips can calculate two times more “zixels” than pixels, e.g., the GeForce 6800 Ultra that has 16 pixel pipes can calculate up to 32 z-values per closk, which is crucial when rendering a lot of shadows.

NVIDIA has always had the industry’s best OpenGL drivers, which is also very important help to win the Doom III competition.

ATI’s upcoming 4.9 beta drivers obtained already after the article’s first publication deliver a speed bump for ATI’s RADEON X800 hardware, however, the additional fps are not enough to outperform any of the GeForce 6800-family graphics processing units.