Mainstream Graphics Cards

This price category is currently divided into two sectors: the top sector is occupied by products that are cut-down versions of more expensive graphics cards, and the bottom sector includes products with specially developed mainstream GPUs.

As we’ve found out, the Radeon HD 2900 Pro and GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB easily deliver excellent performance in the Unreal Tournament 3 demo at every resolution including 1920x1200. Alas, this is not the same with the less advanced products. However optimized the game may be, there are limitations imposed by the technical characteristics of the mainstream GPUs, ATI RV630 and Nvidia G84.

Anyway, Epic Games should be praised for optimizing the game so that it runs fast enough on the mentioned GPUs at a resolution of 1280x1024. The Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS is 15% ahead of the cheaper ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT GDDR4, but that’s not critical since their average speeds are as high as 59-67fps. The opponents go neck and neck at the higher resolutions. The Nvidia card is superior to the AMD one in the amount and performance of the texture processors but inferior to it in the computing capacity, especially memory bandwidth.

It may seem that the game is playable, the average speed being about 45fps, but that’s not exactly so. First, we tested the flyby mode in which there were no special effects from using weapons and no complex models of enemies. It also doesn’t depend on the CPU performance which may be an important performance-related factor during heavy battles. Second, Unreal Tournament 3 is a game in which it is necessary to have a reserve of speed, but we cannot be sure that the average speed of 45fps won’t become 25fps during real play. The resolution of 1920x1200 pixels is practically unavailable on the bottom-mainstream graphics cards.

Our recommendations are simple here. If you are going to play Unreal Tournament 3 seriously, avoid such graphics cards as GeForce 8600 and Radeon HD 2600. You may want to wait for a while until the arrival of the new generation of mainstream graphics cards from AMD/ATI and Nvidia. If you’ve already got a GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB or Radeon HD 2900 Pro, you shouldn’t worry much as such graphics cards are going to provide enough performance for the full version of Unreal Tournament 3.