Gaming Testing Methodology

We have already described the configuration of our testbed, so here’s a list of graphics cards that took part in our tests along with the card from S3:

• NVIDIA GeForce 6600 128MB (300/500MHz)
• ATI RADEON X600 PRO 128MB (400/600MHz)
• ATI RADEON X300 128MB (325/400MHz)

We set the “Detail level adjust” option to 0 (which means the highest quality mode) in the S3 driver for both DirectX and OpenGL. Other Direct3D options were left intact, that is “Auto”. We enabled the optimizations in the NVIDIA ForceWare driver, save for the “Anisotropic mip filter” optimization. The “CATALYST A.I.” option was set to “Standard” in the ATI Catalyst driver, and the “Mipmap Detail Level” to “Quality”; we used the “Quality” mode. The “VSync” option was disabled in all the drivers.

If the game permitted to enable full-screen anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, we used this option. Otherwise we forced the necessary mode from the driver. The tested solutions belong to the value-mainstream class, so we decided not to test resolutions above 1024x768 in the “eye candy” mode. We remind you that the S3 GammaChrome S18 uses super-sampling as the way of doing full-screen anti-aliasing, so we shouldn’t expect it to perform fast in the “eye candy” mode.

We selected the highest graphics quality settings in each game. The following games were used:

First Person 3D Shooters:

• Doom 3
• Unreal Tournament 2004

Third Person 3D Shooters:

• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

Simulators:

• Il-2 Sturmovik: Aces in the Sky
• Colin McRae Rally 05

Strategies:

• Warhammer 40.000: Dawn of War
• Perimeter

Semi-Synthetic Benchmarks:

• Final Fantasy XI Official Benchmark 3

Synthetic Benchmarks:

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

This list doesn’t include those games and benchmarks which were unstable or prone to hang up on the GammaChrome graphics card, namely:

• Far Cry
• Half-Life 2
• The Chronicles of Riddick
• Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow
• Aquamark3