We can see from these results that the newer drivers for all three companies have improved performance by quite a fair amount.  ATi has gained 5% from the Cataylst 3.6 to 3.7, nVidia has gained probably near that, as the clock speed difference isn't that much of a determining factor.  Lastly we have the Matrox Parhelia which has definitely improved in score since we originally tested this card.  Overall all three cards are very playable with the minimum frame rate never going below 110fps.  How about when we turn on the additional quality features of AA and ansiotropic filtering?

    What can we see here, performance wise?  The 5900 Ultra really hasn't lost any performance going to 4X AA and 8X ansiotropic filtering, losing about 3-4% of its frame rate.  However we can see that there is a larger fluctuation in min/max frame rate, as the non-overclocked Ultra almost reaches a low of 100fps, about 16fps lower than in the non AA test.  The Radeon 9800 and FX5900 are similar in that they don't lose much if any performance in this test.  The Radeon 9000 shows us what the term 'budget video card' means, as it drops over 100fps from its previous test.  The Parhelia loses about 33% of its performance in this test, which isn't that much when this card came out but seems high with the current massive bandwidth that is on the newer cards.  Does moving to 1600*1200 slow down the CPU limited FX5900 Ultra?

    In a short answer, no, raising the resolution does not stop the FX5900 from being CPU limited.  The regular FX5900 starts to show its becoming more fill rate limited in this test.  The Radeon 9800 Pro is still not really fill rate limited as it only a couple of fps lower than the results from 1024*768.  The Radeon 9000 Pro and the Parhelia are the weakest video cards here, but will still provide over 60fps in this game, with the Radeon 9000 performing slightly better.  What happens when we enable AA and ansio at this resolution?

    Here is the first time that the FX5900 have a real difference between them.  The regular FX5900 simply drops, by about 30fps, compared to previous results and even compared to the Ultra card.  The Ultra ties the Radeon 9800 in this test, but bests it when the 5900 Ultra is overclocked.  Of the cards you see here, the only card that is not playable is the Matrox Parhelia, which has a maximum frame rate of under 60fps.  With Jedi Knight on a whole these high end cards have absolutely no problem providing playable frame rates even at 1600*1200 with 4X AA and 8X ansiotropic filtering.  How about Serious Sam SE, does it slow down the cards?