Quake 3: Arena may be getting a little old when it comes to gaming benchmarks, but due to its highly repeatable results and incredible performance scaling, the game is still a very popular method of comparing different video cards. As in any game benchmark, it is important to look at the overall rankings, and not just the high framerates. In this test suite, we match up the video cards using version 1.30 and the included demo Four. In both standard and AA/AF modes, Quake 3 benchmarks were run with the default High Quality video options and the in-game detail levels ramped to maximum in our MAX setting.
Quake 3: Arena may not be the newest game benchmark, but that is the key to why we still include it. Many people still play older games, and it is important to see exactly how new video cards react to old school 3D gaming, when pure horsepower was more important than support of the latest SM 3.0 features. The current generation Radeon X1000-based cards are really tuned for newer SM3.0 games, but the Radeon X1900 XT 512MB still shows good legs in Quake 3, finishing just behind the GeForce 7800 GT, and well ahead of the GeForce 7600 GT. We expected this, and it will be interesting to see if the higher-detail anti-aliasing/anisotropic filtering option evens the field a bit.
The Radeon X1900 XT 512MB does inch up on the NVIDIA competition with 4X AA and 8X AF enabled, and pushes ahead of the GeForce 7800 GT. The GeForce 7900 GT 256MB still posts the highest score, but even there, the ATI card makes up some ground.
Unreal Tournament 2004 is an updated version of the popular UT series, and includes support for Botchmatch demos. This is the current standard for Unreal Tournament graphics and performance, and is another good test for our 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 benchmarking gets ATI back on track, and we see the Radeon X1900 XT 512MB posting scores virtually equivalent to the GeForce 7900 GT 256MB. This is where we expect the Radeon X1900 XT to be in this type of game, as well as the potential to take advantage of newer SM3.0 engines.
Once our Unreal Tournament 2004 detail settings are increased to 4X AA and 8X AF, the Radeon X1900 XT 512MB takes the performance lead at 1280x1024, and then really breaks away at 1600x1200. It's quite obvious that even with older games like UT 2004, the Radeon X1900 XT's architecture has the power to excel, and can really take advantage of higher-end detail settings.
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