3D Gaming Performance

Next we turn to the 3D gaming scene to show us a use for the added bandwidth of DDR333 over DDR266:

3D Gaming Performance Quake III Arena 1.29g 640 x 480 - High Quality SiS 645 (DDR333) Intel 850 (PC800) SiS 645 (DDR266) VIA P4X266 (DDR266) 253.8 245.2 243.4 234.3 | 0 | 51 | 102 | 152 | 203 | 254 | 305

Quake III Arena has historically been a great showcase of improvements in memory controllers and memory bandwidth in general; thus it is no great surprise that the 645 with DDR333 SDRAM holds a 8% lead over the P4X266 with DDR266 SDRAM. The lead is cut in half when both platforms are outfitted with DDR266 SDRAM and is reduced even further when you increase the resolution beyond 640 x 480, so the lead again diminishes in value.

3D Gaming Performance Wolfenstein MP Test atdemo8 - 640 x 480 - Max Settings SiS 645 (DDR333) Intel 850 (PC800) SiS 645 (DDR266) VIA P4X266 (DDR266) 146.6 145.8 143.3 140.4 | 0 | 29 | 59 | 88 | 117 | 147 | 176

Also based on the Quake III Arena engine, the recently released Wolfenstein MP Test was included in this review using the second of two benchmarks we created for our GeForce3 Titanium Review last week. This demo, 'atdemo8' is more platform and video card limited than the other more CPU limited demo we created but even then, the span of scores doesn't exceed 4%.

3D Gaming Performance Serious Sam 1.02 SiS 645 (DDR333) Intel 850 (PC800) SiS 645 (DDR266) VIA P4X266 (DDR266) 98.1 97.1 95.9 93.6 | 0 | 20 | 39 | 59 | 78 | 98 | 118

To finish things off, we have another 4% lead by SiS with the 645.