Written By:
Date Posted: March 8, 2002

Quake 3 Arena

Q3A is an OpenGL game which scales well as new CPUs and video cards are released. It is getting to be a little long in tooth, which is why it won't be the sole benchmark as we move towards our final verdict. We will be using "demo four", which is a built in timedemo with the 1.30 patch. Now, with all the upcoming benchmarks on the following pages, it's important to realize that all the scores are culmulative averages. When the action gets hot and heavy, expect to see the framerates plummet as more and more explosions and characters come on to the screen.

As expected, the framerates scale as resolution increases. There really isn't any noticable differences between the Ti500 and stock GeForce 3 at the low resolutions, but as we increase it, the faster card starts leaving the original GeForce 3 behind. It's important to note that when we overclocked the GeForce 3 to Ti500 levels, scores were virtually identical. Anyhow, the "Fastest" setting doesn't really tax the video card that much, so let's move on to higher settings...

More of the same here, as the Ti500 shows a nice speed bump over it's older brother. At over 110 frames per second, 1600x1200 gaming is very possible with the Ti. How about antialiasing?

One of the big features of the GeForce 3 family is the introduction of high-resolution antialiasing (HRAA). Image quality-wise, it is very close to 4X antialiasing, and performs closely with 2X antialiasing. Both cards play well at low resolutions, but the GeForce 3 is badly hobbled by the slower parts when compared to the Ti. At 60fps, the Visiontek 6964 makes 1600x1200 HRAA gaming playable. I am not providing numbers for 2X and 4X, since it's been tested everywhere else, and the performance scales anywhere from 10-30%, either direction depending on what level of AA, from HRAA.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein

This marks the first time we've used the Wolfenstein demo here in the labs. Created by , they're a couple of demos recorded that should provide a good idea how the heavily modified Quake 3 Engine will perform on the system. Should you want to try these demos out, grab them from . Like I said, there are two available, but we're only going to use atdemo6 which provides a better workout for the video card.

Even though the game is based on the Quake 3 game engine, we don't see framerates nearly as high as in the Quake demos. The texturing and polygon count is actually a lot higher in Wolfenstein, which would account for the lower numbers. Like Quake benchmarks though, the most popular resolutions all provide playable framerates on the Visiontek 6964.

3D Mark 2001

's 3D Mark 2001 is a synthetic Direct X 8 benchmarking suite that gives a good indication of how your system will stack up against others.

The Visiontek 6964 easily leads the pack at every resolution. Something notable was that even when overclocked to Ti speeds, the StarForce wasn't able to keep pace. I expect to have a couple of Radeon 8500s in a few days to test, but it looks like this generation of video cards (by that I mean any card released between Q3 2001 - Q1 2002) is led by the Titanium for Direct X gaming.

Unreal Tournament

I've revived the UT benchmark for this review because a lot of you still play it. It's a first person shooter, and although OpenGL is available for UT, we'll be testing the Direct X portion of the game.

Although UT tends to be more CPU intensive than Q3, a faster video card will still reward you with better framerates. No eplanation is really needed I think, as the Visiontek comes out on top again.

Serious Sam

Croteam's first person shooter was one of the big hits from last year. Mixing balls-to-walls action, some great effects, and a bargain basement price, it was no wonder people loved it. Although the polygon count was relatively low when compared with other modern day shooters, the lighting effects and texture maps are impressive. Make no mistake. You'll need a decent setup to run the game the way it was meant to.

Serious Sam seems to put a greater strain on the video card than the other benchmarks. We see the StarForce take a "serious" beating (har, har. I kill myself) here, as the faster Visiontek beats it, even with the GeForce 3 overclocked.

Max Payne

Good ole Max. Perhaps one of the coolest, and action packed games released last year. It's a Direct X based game, and some of you may recognize the Max-FX game engine, which is the same one used in 3D Mark. Unfortunently, there isn't any built-in timedemo, but you can download a mod at that will allow you to do so.

An extremely brutal game on current hardware, the Visiontek 6964 still maintains playable framerates at all resolutions. Since it's a single player game, in my opinion, eye candy is more important than framerates anyhow, so long as it stays over 30fps.

Image Quality

Image quality is , well, as good as the GeForce cards gets. Of course, speed is what you're paying for, but if you've always wanted to turn on every detail in the game options, this is the card to get.

HRAA does it's job of smoothing out the jaggies, but despite the benchmarks showing decent performance, I found the speed lacking. Cranking down to 800x600 was better for me, but who plays at that resolution these days?

Final Words

Visiontek scored a winner with the Xtasy 6964. This is by far the best performing card we've tested so far, but no doubt that'll change soon. We had decent success overclocking, and probably would have done better had we changed the chipset cooling. You're best to redo the ram heatsinks, as ours wasn't bonded as well as it could have been.

Performance, as mentioned, was excellent, and any game you buy today will run great on it as a lot of the GeForce 3 features aren't even touched yet. Be it Direct X or OpenGL, your games will run fast and pretty.

Pricing has dropped a bit with the new Ti4600 GeForce 4s being released now, and at this point, the value of the card is questionable. Our very own dsp had great success overclocking his Ti200, and being a GeForce 3 owner myself, the Ti500 doesn't have any huge advantage over it. Feature wise, any GeForce 3 owner who uses the latest Detonator drivers will essentially have the Ti500 feature set. Granted, the Ti500 overclocked is untouchable, with the exception of the GeForce 4.

So, who should buy a Visiontek Xtasy 6964, or any Ti500 card? Well, if you're saddled with a GeForce 2 card or slower, and high resolution gaming is your wish, I'd splurge on the GeForce 4. If you don't have 400$, then the Ti500 may be for you. Anyone with a GeForce 3 or Radeon 8500 should wait, as the upgrade won't be worth your while.

The Ti200 is another option, and some can reach Ti500 speeds, but don't forget you can also overclock the Ti500. Overclocked, it's performance is great, and will last you a long while. At least until the "ultra" version of the Ti4600 is released.

Visiontek:

88%

Pros: Great performance in all games currently available, decent overclocking ability (results may vary), 3D Quality is excellent, Quincunx AA.

Cons: No extras included. Questionable value with the release of the Ti4600 and great pricing on it's GeForce 3 Ti200 parts. Double check the contact between the heatsink and ram.

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