Unreal Tournament 2004: Testbeds and Methods

In case you downloaded the Unreal Tournament 2004 demo, you probably can experience the game yourself. In case not, check out the list of UT2004 Demo downloads over here. As a hardware web-site, X-bit labs delivers what you probably came here for – tests of modern hardware using up-to-date software.

For our graphics cards comparison we used the same AMD64 rig we use for other reviews of graphics cards:

• CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3400+;
• Mainboard: ASUS K8V Deluxe (VIA K8T800);
• RAM: Corsair XMS PC3200 512MB (2x256MB, 2-3-3-6);
• HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.7, 8MB cache, Serial ATA-150;
• Audio: SoundBlaster Live;
• Software: Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP1, DirectX 9.0b;
• Drivers: latest officially released WHQL drivers from various vendors; ATI CATALYST 4.1, NVIDIA ForceWare 53.03, S3 Graphics S3 Graphics’ drivers version 06.14.10.1597, XGI Reactor 1.02.05.

What was great about our graphics cards’ test is the absence of any glitches and artefacts in the game. Epic as well as graphics chips makers did a nice job with polishing the game and the drivers. Well, the engine is the same as in the Unreal Tournament 2003 – why should it have problems?

Since the Unreal Tournament 2004 Demo contains no pre-recorded demos and because of our policy to use our own demos and benchmarks when possible, we recorded a number of sequences in all levels available in UT2004 demo. Given that the demo has less-detailed textures compared to the full version as well as because of further optimizations of the game engine and drivers, the actual title that will ship at a later date may perform a bit differently. Quite naturally, benchmark results obtained reflect performance only in the particular environments, though, this allows us to draw some trends.

Graphics Cards’ Performance

As a rule we measured speed in “pure mode” 1024x768, 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 resolutions without anisotropic filtering and antialiasing enabled as well as in the same resolutions, but with 8x Quality anisotropic filtering and 4x FSAA on. Speed numbers for S3 Graphics and XGI hardware are only available for “pure” modes because in “eye-candy” cases drivers from those companies did not enable FSAA properly.

All game settings were at the highest possible levels. Textures were at “Normal” simply because the demo does not include high-quality textures because of the size constraints.

We used the following levels for benchmarking purposes:

• Onslaught: Torlan demo;
• Assault: Convoy demo;
• Capture the Flag: Bridge of Fate demo;
• Bombing Run: Colossus demo;
• Death match: Rankin demo.