Comanche 4 Benchmark

The Comanche 4 benchmark from Novalogic gives us an opportunity to use an actual flight sim for performance testing. Flight sims are notorious for their CPU-dependence, and this makes the Comanche 4 benchmark potentially a better CPU test than it is for 3D video cards. The reliance on the CPU shows itself off in the benchmark, and even the slightest difference in framerates could pay off in significantly enhanced game framerates. For our processor comparison, all testing has been performed at 1024x768, 32-bit with audio disabled.

With Comanche 4 being a flight sim, we really didn't expect much of a gap between processors, and the results mirror this opinion very closely. About the only statistical anomaly is that the i850E squeezes out a very tight win over the SiS 645DX, which is the first time this has happened in 3D game testing. Comanche 4 may put a bit more stress on the CPU-memory subsystem, and thus give RDRAM platforms a bit of an edge.

Jedi Knight II

Jedi Knight is the newest Quake 3-based game and many would say it is the most resource hungry. In fact, it's been nicknamed the "best reason to own a GeForce4 Ti" and supplies us with another excellent way of measuring high-end gaming performance. In this particular instance, the processors have been tested using standard High Quality detail settings with the resolution increased to 1024x768.

With Jedi Knight II we are back on familiar territory, and we find the usual suspects in the standard order. The Pentium 4-2.53 GHz is well ahead of its Athlon XP competition, and we are treated to perhaps the most convincing performance victory by the SiS 645DX.