Quake 4 Performance
There has always been a lot of debate in the community surrounding pure timedemo benchmarking. We have opted to stick with the timedemo test rather than the nettimedemo option for benchmarking Quake 4. To be clear, this means our test results focus mostly on the capability of each graphics card to render frames generated by Quake 4. The frame rates we see here don't directly translate into what one would experience during game play.
Additionally, Quake 4 limits frame rate to 60 fps during gameplay whether or not VSync is enabled. Performance characteristics of a timedemo do not reflect actual gameplay. So why do we do them? Because the questions we are trying to answer have only to do with the graphics subsystem. We want to know what graphics card is better at rendering Quake 4 frames. Any graphics card that does better at rendering Quake 4 frames will play Quake 4 better than another card for Quake 4. While that doesn't mean the end user will see higher performance in the game, it does mean that the potential for seeing more performance is there. For instance, if the user upgrades a CPU before the next graphics card upgrade.
Timedemos do walk a fine line between synthetic benchmarks and real world benchmarks. While we tend to favor real world data here at AnandTech, this type of benchmark is very capable of using a real world data set to test the maximum capabilities of the graphics cards under its particular work load without bottlenecking at other points in the system. To be sure, even timedemos can see memory and CPU bottlenecks, as data must be transfered to the graphics card some how. But this impact is much lower than the impact of running AI, physics, script management, I/O, and other game code at the same time.
What this means to the end user is that in-game performance will almost always be lower than timedemo performance. It also means that graphics cards that do slightly better than other graphics cards will not always show a tangible performance increase on an end user's system. As long as we keep these things in mind, we can make informed conclusions based on the data we collect.
Our benchmark consists of the first few minutes of the first level. This includes both inside and outdoor sections, with the initial few fire fights. We tested the game with High Quality settings (not Ultra), and we enabled all the advanced graphics options except for VSync and antialiasing. Id does a pretty good job of keeping framerate very consistent, and so in-game framerates of 25 are acceptable. While we don't have the ability to make a direct mapping to what that means in the timedemo test, our experience indicates that a timedemo fps of about 35 translates into an enjoyable experience on our system. This will certainly vary on other systems, so take it with a grain of salt. But the important thing to remember is that this is more of a test of relative performance of graphics cards when it comes to rendering Quake 4 frames -- it doesn't directly translate to Quake 4 experience.
The 7600 GT is able to run Quake 4 at this resolution with no problem, while the 6600 GT and the X1600 XT aren't up to the task. Running at 1600x1200 is a good solid resolution for Quake 4, as the low contrast edges and the pixel size (on a 21" monitor like the one we test on) is good enough to make aliasing less of an issue than in a game like Battlefield 2. Very interestingly, the X1900 GT bests the 7900 GT in an OpenGL game, where the opposite was true in more than a couple DirectX games in this series of tests.
The X1900 GT is a great value for Quake 4, offering performance beyond that of the 7900 GT while costing much less. Owners of the X1800 GTO (or similar class cards) aren't doing too poorly here, but owners of the 6600 GT would do well by running at 1024x768 for the best experience. Other cards that couldn't hold their own at 1600x1200 will do fine at 1280x1024.
Very interestingly, it seems that a benchmark traditionally ruled by NVIDIA hardware has lost ground to ATI. As this really is more of a pure OpenGL rendering benchmark, we are glad to see ATI doing so well where they haven't had strong performance in the past.
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gmallen - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
Most of the PC enthusiast population interested in mid-range cards are still running AGP motherboards (this is based on sales of pci motherboards vs. agp motherboards). Where are these cards?Josh7289 - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
They don't exist.
arturnowp - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
HiIt's written that all card in oblivion was tested with HDR Lighting with X800GTO doesn't support. I think your results are misleading. The same with SC: Chaos Theory...
BTW: Who plays Oblivion with Actor Fade at 20%, Item Fade at 10% and Object Fade at 25% you get better graphics and performance setting those option to 50-60% and turning off grass with consums a lot of power and doesn't look good. In foliage it's better to see your enemies from greater distance the say with a horse ;-)
arturnowp - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
OK there's writen about SC: Chaos Theory but all in all conclusion are misleading "Owners of the X800 GTO may have a little more life left in their card depending on how overclocked the card is, but even at stock clocks, it might be wise to hang on for another product cycle if possibl" where GeForce 6600GT performe on par with X800GTO. It would be better to exclude X800GTO from charts or mark it as SM 2.0 card. What's better GeForce 6600GT should be tested in SM 2.0 mode...nv40 - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
Don't why?http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/pow...">http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/pow...
Some difference of test are so large that it almost shocked me
For instance:
7900GT@84.21 with FX-60 can run 54 FPS avg in 1600x1200 with 4xAA 16xAF in X-bit lab
7900GT@91.33 with X6800 just be 35 FPS ave in 1600x1200 with only 4x AA in Anandtech
Problem of 91.33? Intel 975X? X6800? nVidia?
more than 40% performance difference despite X6800 is far superior to FX-60
coldpower27 - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
They probably aren't running the same time demo sequences.nv40 - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
Maybe... but only 9% dif in X1900GT (41 vs 38)And 7900GT test in Anandtech definitely performed much worse then X-bit lab in general
nothing with which is correct or not, but if both are right, the the conclusion may be probably draw like below:
1. Driver problem: 91.33 is much slower than 84.21 (nV Cheat, or 91.33 problem)
2. CPU problem: X6800 is much inferior than FX-60 in game (Rediculous, and far from true in every test)
3. Platform problem: nVidia cards perform much worse in intel chipset (975X)
Sharky974 - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
I agree. I clearly remember Xbit declaring the 7900GT to win the vast majority of benches vs the X1900GT.In fact overall the X1900GT wasn't warmly recieved. I really feel this deserves some looking into.
For example, I'll have to go look, but I think Firing Sqaud also showed the X1900GT as inferior to the 7900GT.
As it stands now, it's like Anand's platforms are somehow ATI biased, on the other hand I believe Xbit platform is Nvidia biased. Xbit reviews nearly always show Nvidia winning.
Sharky974 - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/sapphire_radeo...">http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/sapphire_radeo...I started on the first page of benches.
As one glaring example:
Firings squad: Quake 4 1280X1024 4XAA 8XAF 7900GT-87.2 X1900GT-60.6
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/sapphire_radeo...">http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/sapphire_radeo...
Anand: Quake 4 1280X1024 4XAA 7900 GT-45.1 X1900GT-49.8
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/roundups...">http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/roundups...
With similar settings, FS has the 7900GT getting nearly double the frames Anand does. The X1900GT also gets significantly more in FS review, from 49 to 60 FPS, but nowhere near the change the 7900GT sees, with the net effect the X1900GT eaks out a win at Anand, but loses by nearly 27+ FPS at FS.
The X1900GT is definitly a better card than I had remembered, even at the FS benches though.
Also, FS was using a FX-57. Anand a much more powerful CPU, making results all the more puzzling.
In addition to some of the other suggestions, I'd question drivers. FS was using older drivers on both since it is an older review. Perhaps Nvidia drivers have seen a large performance decrease, or ATI's a similar increase? This seems fairly unlikely, though, as I dont think you normally get huge differences from driver to driver.
Unless Nvidia really was cheating RE 16-bit filtering as the INQ claimed a while back, so they fixed it causing a massive performance decrease? :) Again though, that suggestion is made half-jokingly.
This definitly needs a lot of looking into I fell. Anand's results are quite different than others around the web at first blush.
JarredWalton - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
Levels can make a huge difference in performance. For example, Far Cry has segments that get about 80 FPS max on any current CPU (maybe higher with Core 2 Extreme overclocked...), but other areas of the game run at 150+ FPS on even a moderate CPU like a 3500+. I don't have a problem providing our demo files, but some fo them are quite large (Q4 is about 130 MB if I recall). SCCT, FEAR, and X3 provide a reference that anyone can compare to, if they want. The only other thing is that ATI driver improvements are certainly not unlikely, especially in Quake 4.