Game 3:

Game3 uses the same technique of dynamic shadows rendering as Game2, and NVIDIA GeForce FX 5800 Ultra is again faster than ATI RADEON 9700 PRO.

Game 4:

The results of Game4 are not so easy to explain.

We know that this test uses pixel shaders of 1.4 and 2.0 versions and vertex shaders of 1.1 and 2.0 versions. And we also know that the synthetic pixel and vertex shader tests of 3DMark 2001 and 3DMark03 don’t show any clear advantage of NVIDIA GeForce FX 5800 Ultra. Why isn’t it in the lead in Game4 then?

We guess the 42.68 driver is specially optimized for 3DMark03. When the driver meets “familiar” code of pixel and vertex shaders from 3DMark03, it probably substitutes it with another code producing the same visual effect, but running faster on GeForce FX. Or it may use lower precision of calculations in pixel shaders.

Of course, this is only a supposition. But if we take another driver, for example, version 42.82, we will see a curious thing: GeForce FX will perform about the same in all games, but slower in 3DMark03. In this case, NVIDIA GeForce FX 5800 Ultra would lose all its present advantage over ATI RADEON 9700 PRO.