Jedi Knight is the newest Quake 3-based game and some would say it is among the most resource hungry. It gives you a great reason to buy a high-end 3D card, and also provides another excellent way of measuring high-end 3D gaming performance. In our benchmarking, the video cards have been tested using standard Normal and High Quality detail settings.
Even with the newer and more demanding Jedi Knight II, the pattern continues to hold true. Our Normal detail once again show the Parhelia lagging behind the other 3D video cards, with it losing a greater framerate percentage as the resolutions are increased.
The High Quality benchmarks are almost a duplicate of the other game tests, with the Parhelia continuing to perform just under the level of the GeForce3 Ti 200.
The Comanche 4 benchmark from Novalogic gives us an opportunity to use an actual flight sim for 3D video testing. This is a different game engine that we've ever used before, so don't be put off by the relatively low framerates. Just like the high fps of Quake 3, a card's relative position is the most important factor. These tests were run in both 16 and 32-bit modes, with sound disabled.
As with the previous two game benchmarks, the Parhelia also falls behind in Comanche 4 16-bit testing, with the one bright spot being the victory over the GeForce3 Ti 200 at 1600x1200.
At the Comanche 4 32-bit setting, it is almost a repeat performance. The Parhelia starts out well back of the other cards, and once again manages to outpace the GeForce3 Ti 200 at the highest resolution.
MadOnion's 3DMark 2001SE Pro is a popular 3D benchmark tool, and one that many gamers use to compare performance results. All benchmark testing was performed in 32-bit mode, and used pure hardware T&L/DirectX support.
To cap off the standard game benchmarks we have 3DMark 2001SE giving us a pretty good picture of overall 3D card rankings. The Parhelia does put in a bit better showing against the competition, as it finishes ahead of the GeForce3 Ti 200 at all resolutions.
We moved a bit deeper into the 3DMark 2001SE scores to determine if the detailed results would illuminate exactly where the Matrox Parhelia was falling back in the performance race. The GeForce4 Ti 4600 and Radeon 8500 were well ahead in all Game 1-4 tests, sometimes almost doubling the framerates of the Parhelia. The same goes for Single Texture performance, but the Multi-Texturing results had the Parhelia out in the lead.
The remainder of the 3DMark 2001SE tests have the GeForce4 Ti 4600 and Radeon 8500 out in front (including pixel and vertex shading) and the only place we saw such divergent scores was in the Single and Multi-Texturing areas.
