Performance during Real Gameplay

Besides the flyby test we also tried to check out the cards’ performance with the Fraps utility that is capable of registering the frame rate during a specific time interval. We used a 60-second interval that should be enough to see the behavior of graphics cards under real gaming conditions in such a dynamic game as Unreal Tournament 3.

High-End Graphics Cards

We performed this test over two pairs of graphics cards: GeForce 8800 GTX/Radeon HD 2900 XT 1GB and GeForce 8600 GTS/Radeon HD 2600 XT GDDR4. It is impossible to repeat a game situation exactly when playing with human opponents, so the following diagrams should not be regarded as a comparison of graphics cards from ATI and Nvidia. It is only a means to see the behavior of the game under real conditions and how well it is optimized for modern hardware.

These results agree quite well with what we saw in the flyby tests. The speed of high-end graphics cards is always comfortable. The minimum of speed is as high as 40fps even at 1920x1200. You should note the considerable fluctuations of performance and remember that the graphics quality is lower in the demo. Things can be different in the final version of the game.