Return to Castle Wolfenstein is another Quake-based game, but with some notable differences. The basic game engine may be the same, but the graphics, gameplay and stress it puts on a processor are very different. Until the next Quake game appears, RtCW is the next best way to determine high-end Quake engine performance. We have used the Checkpoint MP demo using the default High Quality detail settings and have upped the resolution to 1024x768.
In our Return to Castle Wolfenstein benchmarking, the Athlon XP 3000+ once again falls just short of both the Pentium 4-3.06 and 2.8 GHz processors, while surpassing the Athlon XP 2800+ and confirming that the 512K of L2 cache does result in real-world performance increases.
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.
The Athlon XP 3000+ shows a very similar trend to past gaming tests, in that it falls behind the Pentium 4 competition, while still offering the fastest AMD performance. But seeing how Comanche 4 is a CPU-bound benchmark with low framerates, these are still pretty significant differences.
Unreal Tournament 2003 includes a benchmark program that automatically tests two separate modes. One is Flyby, which takes a canned tour of the UT game world and then offers up a framerate score and really hammers both the CPU and video card. The second is Botmatch, and this is a more game-oriented test than Flyby, and is a far more CPU-oriented test. In this section, weve tested UT 2003 at 1024x768 x 32-bit.
The Unreal Tournament 2003 Flyby benchmark is the most current game we use, and it demonstrates a very tight race between AMD and Intel. The Athlon XP 3000+ is right up there with the Pentium 4-3.06 GHz, and both are ahead of the Athlon XP 2800+ and P4-2.8 GHz.
The Unreal Tournament 2003 Botmatch testing is a more CPU-bound test, and it shows virtually the same scenario we witnessed with the Flyby test. The Pentium 4-3.06 GHz takes the outright crown, while the Athlon XP 3000+ takes a close second and sits nicely ahead of the other processors.
