Serious Sam: The Second Encounter is a great sequel in the popular franchise and the benchmark portion is even better than the original. This new game not only puts the pressure on new 3D cards (especially at higher resolutions) but provides some excellent in-game demos in wide open spaces with tons of enemies. For our specific tests, we have used the Elephant Atrium demo to determine potential framerates, using both 16 and 32-bit modes.
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter 16-bit scores follow the basic trend of diminishing returns at lower resolutions, but this changes pretty quickly at 1280x1024 and 1600x1200. Also notice how the GeForce4 Ti 4400 keeps up pretty well against the MSI G4Ti4600-VTD in 16-bit testing.
There is a similar trend at 32-bit testing, but the GeForce4 Ti cards start breaking away a bit earlier on. The MSI G4Ti4600-VTD also starts putting a bit more distance between it and the GeForce4 Ti 4400.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein is another Quake engine game, but with some notable differences. The basic game engine may be the same, but the graphics, gameplay and the stress it puts on a 3D card are very different. Until the next Quake game appears, RtCW is the next best way to determine high-end Quake engine performance. We have employed the Checkpoint MP demo for our testing, using the default Normal (16-bit) and High Quality settings.
Even at 16-bit Normal detail settings, the added graphic detail and API support of Return to Castle Wolfenstein really gives the GeForce4 Ti cards a noticeable advantage over the GeForce3 Ti 500. At 1280x1024, the GeForce3 seems to hit a wall, but the MSI G4Ti4600-VTD just powers on and racks up some impressive scores.
The cards drop back a bit when presented with RtCW High Quality benchmarking, but the GeForce4 Ti 128-MB boards seem to come out looking the best. While the MSI G4Ti4600-VTD does hold a nice overall lead, the demands of the 1600x1200 HQ testing do show in the framerate.
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