Unreal Tournament 2003 includes a benchmark program that automatically tests in two separate modes. The one we're going to be looking at 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. With this week's release of Unreal Tournament 2004, we're currently evaluating it (and the demo) for possible inclusion in future performance testing, but for the time being, we're sticking with the tried-and-true UT 2003.
Unreal Tournament 2003 is another high-end 1st-person shooter performance benchmark, and the mainstream Flyby testing shows a very close race for the two 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPUs. It's another dead heat, but the Pentium 4-3.4E does have a bit more juice, although both fall well back of the Athlon 64 3400+.
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 benchmarking is another very tight race on the Pentium 4 side, with the Pentium 4-3.4E eking out a very tight victory. There's not much to choose from on the AMD vs. Intel side, and the Athlon 64 3400+ posts only a slightly higher score.
The 3DMark 2003 benchmark is a great way to present DirectX 9 gaming performance, assuming the video card is kept consistent between platforms. And not only does it offer a view at potential DirectX 9 gaming performance, but FutureMark has also included a specific CPU Test that was lacking in previous versions. As in all of our game tests, this benchmark was performed at the standard 1024x768x32 resolution and color depth.
The overall 3DMark 2003 race is usually a tight one, due to the benchmark's reliance on the 3D video card. Even so, we do find the Pentium 4-3.4E with a very slight lead over the 3.4 GHz Northwood, and both Pentium 4-3.4 GHz models with a similar lead over the AMD Athlon 64 3400+ competition.
The 3DMark 2003 CPU benchmark is one of the better DirectX 9/gaming processor tests, and it not only stresses the CPU, but also the system and memory components as well. As in many of our previous CPU and memory benchmarking, the Pentium 4-3.4E and its 1-MB of cache shows a decided edge over the Northwood design. The Athlon 64 3400+ also falls back from the Pentium 4-3.4E and 3.4C processors.
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