Unreal Tournament 2003 Flyby Performance

Unreal Tournament 2003 includes a benchmark program that automatically tests in two separate gaming modes. The one we're going to be looking at is Flyby, which takes a canned tour of the UT game world, then offers up a framerate score and really hammers both the CPU and video card. The Botmatch performance results are no longer used in our reviews, and we leave that portion of the testing for the improved Unreal Tournament 2004 engine to supply.

Unreal Tournament 2003 is another one of our older game tests, and it should help give us a better idea of the old school performance levels of the Gigabyte GeForce 7600 GT 256MB card. The overall framerates were very impressive, especially at 1280x960, where the Gigabyte card is right up there with the top-end models. At 1600x1200, the results drop, and the Gigabyte GeForce 7600 GT 256MB card just barely outperforms the GeForce 6800 Ultra, while being left in the figurative dust by the higher-end cards.

Unreal Tournament 2003 Flyby AA and AF Performance

When the game's detail levels are increased to 4X AA and 8X AF levels, we see a significant drop-off in framerates, and the Gigabyte GeForce 7600 GT 256MB card suffers more than most. It now falls below the GeForce 6800 Ultra at both resolutions.

Unreal Tournament 2004 Performance

Unreal Tournament 2004 is an upgraded version of the popular UT series, and includes support for Botchmatch demos. This is the next step for Unreal Tournament graphics and performance, and is another serious test for current video cards. For this benchmark, we've used the BenchemAll GUI interface with the following options and settings: average of 3 Botmatch maps and maximum detail graphics.

The Unreal Tournament 2004 Botmatch benchmark scores get the Gigabyte GeForce 7600 GT 256MB back on track, and instead of falling back from the crowd, it now sits on par with the GeForce 6800 Ultra. The Gigabyte card is also not that far back from the higher-end models, especially at 1280x1024.

Unreal Tournament 2004 AA and AF Performance

Once the Unreal Tournament 2004 detail settings are increased to 4X AA and 8X AF, the Gigabyte GeForce 7600 GT starts exhibiting some of the basic trends found in UT 2003, although the framerate drop is not quite as drastic, and the card stays within striking distance of the GeForce 6800 Ultra.