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Written By:
Date Posted: October 2 , 2002
Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
Jedi Knight was a highly anticipated game based on the Quake III Arena engine. With the quality of the first few games which are still played (Dark Forces, Dark Forces II) this game had a high level of quality to reach, and it seems to have succeeded. A bonus in this game is the addition of a demo that can be used to benchmark video cards, in our case, as well as other products. The quality of the models and textures is in my opinion much better than Quake III and as such is a better game to test the performance of video cards. The fact that frame rates in Quake III at 1600*1200 are well above what many consider 'playable' shows that that game is getting long in the tooth moves us to find a better alternative. So let us look at frame rates at 1024, 1600, and for the Parhelia only, 3072*768, yes that's right TripleHead benchmarks.
| Video Card |
Min FPS |
Avg. FPS |
Max FPS |
| Kyro II: |
51 |
72.93 |
97 |
| Parhelia: |
58 |
76.96 |
102 |
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| Parhelia |
Kyro II |
What can we see at 1024 with no AA? Both cards perform about the same with the Parhelia having the larger variation in frame rates at the start of the test but the Kyro II acts in the same way in the second half of the test. Thanks to the newer drivers we see 2fps improvement at this setting. Both cards provide similar results with the Parhelia being only a few fps faster than the Kyro II, it seems that at least one if not both cards are CPU limited at this resolution. Do both cards perform the same when we turn AA and ansiotropic filtering on? Lets look at the results.
| Video Card |
Min FPS |
Avg. FPS |
Max FPS |
| Kyro II: |
6 |
10.30 |
16 |
| Parhelia: |
58 |
75.69 |
96 |
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| Parhelia |
Kyro II |
Interesting, just as with the DroneZmarK tests the Kyro II plummets to less than 15fps while the Parhelia loses only about 1fps in total compared to the other 1024 settings. With the newest drivers I was able to actually run this benchmarks on the Parhelia. If we look at two graphs between the Parhelia with AA and ansiotropic filtering and without, we see that when these features are turned on the Parhelia becomes more GPU limited instead of CPU limited, but it still seems that a CPU upgrade might help improve the performance of this video card. How though does the Parhelia perform if we turn off AA and ansiotropic filtering and raise the resolution to 1600*1200 and in the case of the Parhelia 3072*768 as well?
| Video Card |
Min FPS |
Avg. FPS |
Max FPS |
| Kyro II 1600*1200: |
36 |
47.83 |
60 |
| Parhelia 1600*1200: |
50 |
73.26 |
89 |
| Parhelia 3072*768: |
52 |
65.10 |
79 |
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| Parhelia 1600*1200 |
Kyro II 1600*1200 |
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| Parhelia 3072*768 |
At 1600 the Parhelia doesn't lose much performance compared to 1024. The Kyro II loses a fair amount between 1024 and 1600 while the Parhelia doesn't lose much more than 5% between the two resolutions. The Parhelia is very CPU limited at all resolutions we tested, even at 3072*768 in TripleHead, the Parhelia only loses about 8fps on average and has a lower maximum frame rate than at 1600*1200. When we switched from the older 1.0.4.231 drivers to the newer 1.01.00.080 drivers, we noticed a 20fps improvement at 1600*1200 at high settings as well as at 3072*768.
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