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Written By:
Date Posted: October 2 , 2002
Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo
This was a highly anticipated demo and when released it has some of the best graphics that I've seen so far. The inclusion of many DirectX 8.1b features that the Parhelia has is a nice bonus. Would the lack of a T&L unit slow the Kyro II down? Is the Parhelia CPU limited in this test? Lets find out.
| Video Card |
Min FPS |
Avg. FPS |
Max FPS |
| Kyro II: |
8 |
14.31 |
26 |
| Parhelia: |
19 |
25.54 |
36 |
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| Parhelia |
Kyro II |
UT's heavy use of T&L in the game hurts the Kyro II which does not have a T&L unit, and makes the Kyro II very CPU limited, but even so you would need a 2.6GHz processor to be able to even theoretically be able to reach 30fps which many consider the minimum to play the game smoothly. The Parhelia fairs much better, but even at this resolution it is very CPU limited, as lowering the resolution doesn't change the frame rate much, if at all. Even with this worst case scenario at this resolution the Parhelia was playable in my eyes. Can the Parhelia still be playable when we add ansiotropic filtering and anti-aliasing?
| Video Card |
Min FPS |
Avg. FPS |
Max FPS |
| Parhelia: |
14 |
18.92 |
29 |
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| Parhelia |
Unfortunately the Kyro II was running at a maximum of about 2fps with an average around 1fps, and as such was excluded from this test. The Parhelia loses about 7fps in average frame rates, but is still CPU limited, as we see the average is closer to the minimum. The minimum frame rate is found in the same general area in all the UT tests which help to show the areas that there is the most 'action'. How does the Parhelia fare when we turn the resolution up?
| Video Card |
Min FPS |
Avg. FPS |
Max FPS |
| Kyro II: |
4 |
6.92 |
10 |
| Parhelia: |
12 |
17.31 |
24 |
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| Parhelia |
Kyro II |
We see at this resolution that both cards are GPU limited rather than CPU dependent. The Kyro II is almost completely GPU limited as we can see by the fact that the graph is almost fully flat. The Parhelia is fairly GPU limited, more so than in any other game so far, but it can still have some improvement by providing a faster CPU. Now that we've looked at four games as well as two synthetic results, we can see a better view of what this card can do.
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