Unreal Tournament 2003 Performance

Unreal Tournament 2003 includes a benchmark program that automatically tests in 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-bound test. In this section, weve tested UT 2003 at 1024x768 x 32-bit.

Unreal Tournament 2003 is a great 1st-person shooter performance benchmark, and the Flyby testing shows a very close race at the high-end. The Pentium 4-3.4 GHz EE makes a run at the high score, but just falls short of the Athlon 64 FX-51 and 3400+ scores. Our first UT 2003 Prescott-Northwood comparison shows the Pentium 4 3.2E getting out to a slim lead, but keep in mind that the Flyby portion is a general system score, rather than a pure CPU stress.

The CPU side is taken care of by the UT 2003 Botmatch component, which is similar to Comanche 4 for delineating game-related performance by CPU design. The Pentium 4 3.2E may have won the Flyby benchmarking, but Botmatch has the Pentium 4-3.2 GHz Northwood in the lead, though the Prescott is able to stave off the 3.0 GHz processor. It's another very tight race at the high-end, where the Pentium 4-3.4 GHz EE again falls just shy of the Athlon 64 high score.

X2 - The Threat Demo Performance

The X2 - The Threat Demo is a tough gaming benchmark that takes the form of a rolling demo. It may be technically DirectX 8 in design, but its high-end 3D support and features make this a serious test for current 3D games, and not far removed from our DirectX 9 benchmarking. Once started, the X2 demo displays various game scenes, and incorporates the space-sim aspects of the game into a test run that can really separate the high-end hardware from the pack.

The X2 Demo benchmark testing shows just how close these high-end processors can be, and in this case, the Pentium 4-3.4 GHz EE hits the exact score as the Athlon 64 FX-51. The Pentium 4 3.2E takes at shot at the Northwood score, but just falls short, but at only a 0.2 FPS margin, these two processors are effectively tied.