Benchmarks :::...

Next we ran the same tests on a slightly faster system with the following specs:

Motherboard: DFI LANParty UT nF3 250Gb (nForce3-250Gb ) Motherboard
CPU: AMD Athlon64 3400+
Memory: 2x512MB GeIL Ultra-X
Hard Disk: Western Digital WD1200JB 120GB PATA
PSU: Tagan TG480 480watt
WindowsXP Pro + SP2

Graphics Cards Used:

-Crucial Radeon X800 Pro
-Club3D GeForce 6800GT

NVIDIA Driver Settings:

Drivers used were ForceWare 71.84s, Vsync was disabled.

I used the 4x Antialiasing setting for both drivers despite the fact it could be subjectively argued the quality level isn't entirely equal this way. It could also be argued that my using the ATi driver image quality slider set to "High Performance" gave it an advantage compared the the 6800GT's setting of "Quality", however that seems to be the parallel most people draw when comparing quality.

3DMark05 Pro: (Patched to 1.2.0):

3DMark05 Pro - is the latest version of the highly favoured 3DMark series. It is the first benchmark to require a DirectX9.x compliant hardware with support for Pixel Shaders 2.0 or higher!

Doom3: (Patched to 1.1)

We waited what seemed like a lifetime for Doom3, and when it arrived it seemed gamers loved it or were only mildly impressed by it in roughly equal measure. Dark and moody with a shock around every corner, a trait that makes it rather repetitive and predictable at times, it is still a genuine showcase of your hardware's capabilities.

4x AA Applied

If you were wondering why they call the GeForce 6 series Doom3 cards, there's your answer!

Far Cry: (Patched to 1.31)

Certainly my candidate for game of the year 2004, Far Cry combines a good plot with some eye-popping, jaw-dropping graphics for a truly immersive gaming experience. Spoilt by some recent hardware compatibility issues, particularly when run in OpenGL, it slightly rained on its own parade with many gamers frustrated at not being able to see it in all its undoubted splendor.

Direct 3D

Direct 3D + 4xAA Applied

Although I've included the numbers I should point out that neither card correctly rendered the game in OpenGL, both suffering flashing and missing textures. I may get around to trying to troubleshoot the issue but as I was running all fresh installs and the game was fully patched there wasn't an obvious route to take to try and solve the problem quickly at the time of testing.

The numbers themselves are clearly suspect but rather than gloss over the problem I've added the charts so you can see.

OpenGL

OpenGL + 4xAA Applied

Codecreatures Benchmark Pro:

No longer supported in benchmark form, Codecreatures Pro remains a stern test of your graphics processing power. Codecreatures is still around as a game development engine and details can be found on THIS page.

AquaMark 3 (Patched to1.53)

Technically, AquaMark3 utilizes recent hardware features of the new DirectX 9 API, such as PixelShader 2.0, while staying fully backward compatible to DirectX 8 and 7 graphics hardware. The utilized game engine, the krass? Engine, has been used in Aquanox and AquaNox 2: Revelation as well as in the upcoming RTS Spellforce by Phenomic Game Development. It is accepted industrywide and well-known to deliver high-performance graphic effects with superior quality.

We ran the default benchmark: