Video cards

Unreal Tournament 2004 Performance

Unreal Tournament 2004 has replaced Quake 3 as our primary "old school" graphics benchmark, and now serves as the performance test for classic games where pixel power was far more important than the latest SM3.0 feature set. Although it is getting a bit on the elderly side, UT 2004 is still the most recent iteration (at least until UT 2007) of the popular Unreal Tournament series, and includes support for Botchmatch demos. It represents the current standard for Unreal Tournament graphics and performance, and is another good test for our video cards. For this benchmark test, we've used the BenchemAll GUI interface with the following options and settings: average of 3 Botmatch maps and maximum detail graphics.

Our Unreal Tournament 2004 Botmatch benchmark results show the ASUS EAX1950PRO 256MB posting average results, on par with the GeForce 7900 GS at 1280x1024 but well back at 1600x1200. At this higher resolution, the ASUS card is slightly faster than a Radeon X1800 XL, but still manages to spank the GeForce 7600 GT. This is a common trend with ATI Radeon X1000-based video cards, as these are tuned for SM3.0 software, and have a bit more trouble with older games. The ASUS EAX1950PRO follows right along, and will perform above its class with many new games, but tends to fall back with older ones like Unreal Tournament 2004.

Unreal Tournament 2004 AA and AF Performance

This trend continues when we upgrade Unreal Tournament 2004 to 4X AA and 8X AF settings, and we see the ASUS EAX1950PRO 256MB drop back from the GeForce 7900 GS - more in line with the Radeon X1800 XL, while easily outpacing the GeForce 7600 GT.

Half-Life 2 Performance

Half-Life 2 is another in a long line of serious first-person shooters from Valve, and the game has really taken FPS graphics to the next level. This is a great opportunity to push our graphics cards to the limit, as well as providing a point-counterpoint to DOOM 3. As with DOOM 3, there is also some CPU-reliance present in the scores, but in terms of relative performance, we still find the top-performing cards breaking away from the pack.

The situation changes very quickly with Half-Life 2, and the ASUS EAX1950PRO 256MB posts some very impressive scores. In fact, it is the fastest video card of the bunch, even outperforming the GeForce 7950 GT.

Half-Life 2 AA and AF Performance

The increase to 4X anti-aliasing and 8X anisotropic filtering details does bring the ASUS EAX1950PRO 256MB back down to Earth, but the card remains a top performer. But now, it simply outpaces the GeForce 7900 GS, while falling back from both the GeForce 7900 GT and 7950 GT.