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Overclocking
Overclocking such a fast card may seem like overkill, and unless you plan to play at high resolution, it is. As we've stated a dozen times before, low resolution is more CPU taxing, and higher resolution is more video card intensive.
We managed to get an overclock of 310/715, which seems to fall in the average range of most overclocks. I can say that the numbers were much better than our Visiontek results.
Benchmark Setup
AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67GHz)
Asus A7V266-E
512MB Kingston DDR PC2100
3D Mark 2001 SE
Quake 3 Arena
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Villagemark
Comparison Hardware:
Visiontek Xtasy 6964 GeForce 3 Ti500
ATi Radeon 8500 LE
Visiontek GeForce 4 Ti4600
As mentioned in our previous Visiontek review, we actually tested the PNY GeForce 4 solution earlier. This will be the last video test with the above test bed (since somebody won it last month). Realizing the Radeon 8500 and Ti500 may be outclassed for these tests, both are still fine cards for todays gamers. They were king of the hill not too long ago, and I'm including them simply for the sake of showing how far graphics speed has come. Because of the power of the modern video card, we're dropping all tests of below 1024x768 for the top end cards. I figure, if you paid 400$ for a video card, you better already have at least a 17" monitor and play at high resolutions. With the faster processors available, high resolution will shift the onus of the work on the video.
Quake 3: Arena
id Software's last game engine has spawned several excellent games since the release of Quake 3: Arena a few years ago. It's getting a little old, but many still use it as a measure of a video card's OpenGL performance. 1024x768 is a piece of cake for most new video cards now, so let's take a look, starting at 1280x1024.
The GeForce 4 Ti4600 flexes it's high resolution superiority by over 30%, when compared to the competition. Still, the older Ti500 and Radeon 8500 do very well, and any framerates in excess of over 150 will do more than enough for most people. Then again, with this much power in the Ti4600, why not go for more?
At over 150 frames per second, at maximum resolution, this is an impressive showing indeed, besting the previous "framerate kings" by over 25%. The differences between the PNY Verto and Xtasy Ti4600 are less than 1%, and well within our margin of error.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Grey Matter licensed the Quake engine to revive a classic. Return to Castle Wolfenstein uses a heavily modified Quake engine (it's actually modified Team Arena code), and therefore demands a more robust system to maintain Quake 3 framerates.
We no longer see the 200 frames per second we were used to with Quake 3, but all our contenders do quite well for themselves. Although not totally maxing out the Ti4600, it does keep a little over 11% in terms of framerates over the competition.
It's all about high resolution when we're talking about with the Ti4600. Older cards just can't keep up with the improved speed, and memory enhancements of the GeForce 4.
At over 100 frames per second, it's obvious who is the current high resolution king. Keep in mind that these are "averages", but the higher the average, the more likely the peaks and valleys of actual gaming will remain consistent.
3D Mark 2001 SE
A well known synthetic benchmark, we use it here for our Direct3D tests, as there aren't really many Direct3D benchmark programs I like that much. Add to the fact that you can compare yourself with other users add to it's value.
As with our previous benchmarks, 640x480 and 800x600 have been dropped. We chose the default settings, as well as test the AntiAliasing performance, including nvidia's new 4XS mode.
At 1024x768, this is the closest we've came to 10 000 3D Marks. Obviously, with a bit of tweaking, that number would have been attainable. It's about 15% behind, but the Radeon 8500 shows that it's still a contender for Direct 3D. I'm not really sure why the PNY kept scoring about 4% lower than the Visiontek, but that was the best I was able to manage out of it.
The Radeon maintains it's lead over the Ti500, but it pales in comparison to the Ti4600 scores. Keeping a 10% lead over the Radeon, the Xtasy is proving itself to be the current Direct3D champ.
By this point, we separate the dudes from the dudettes. At 1600x1200, we're seeing 3D Mark scores by the Ti4600 very close to the scores of the Ti500 and Radeon at 1280x1024. Take this as you will, but as we said before, 1600x1200 gaming is very possible now.
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