Low End Tests: Last Man Standing
And finally, we have the low end budget cards and previous generation equipment. We ran these tests at the default resolution set by each of the first three quality settings. We ran the High Quality setting, as last years midrange cards almost make our playable frame rate list. For some, this may be close enough, but we really want to see that 40-45 frames per second average before we call it rock solid.At Medium quality, the GeForce 4 Ti 4400 falls in our playable range, which is very impressive for such an old card. Medium quality still looks great, and even with the quantization visible on lighted surfaces (especially in specular highlights) is still aeons beyond what one would expect this venerable card to handle. The id team has certainly out done themselves with quality support for previous generation hardware while building in plenty of scalability.
Though we didn't test it here, the best setting for both the 5700 Ultra and 9600 XT is Medium Quality at 800x600, as it gives the best performance and balance of visual experience.
Another bit of goodness to take away from these tests is that Low Quality and Medium Quality really don't show a tangable difference on these cards. There is absolutely no reason to run Low Quality on any card that has more than 64MB of RAM. This means that textures won't be resized, though some quantization may be evident from the compression used on normal, specular, and diffuse maps.
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Xtian - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
I think it is about time to benchmark using common resolution settings. Most people with LCD screens want to run their games at the native1280x1024 resolution of their LCDs.
So, will my 128MB radeon 9700 (non pro) be able to run the game at 1280x1024 ? Anyone who knows ?
/Xtian
gmenfan - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
How do you run the timedemo included with the game? Also, does anybody know the command to raise the refresh rate.Pollock - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
I'm getting very depressed...I have a GeForce2 MX that I got for free from my friend...Drayvn - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
Would you be able to use the 4.9 beta catalyst drivers, supposedly they are for the doom3 performance issues?RuStYwAvE - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
Why do you guys want to see the benchmarks on a gf4 4200 and ati 8500.4200 is slightly underclock 4400 so subtract a few framerates and the ati 8500 should perform better then a ati 9200 since it has a higher core and memory speed.
Also i think the old geforce3 and geforce3 ti 500 is much better then a geforce fx 5200 and is equilivalent to a 5200 ultra and 5600 just under a geforce4 4200.
Bonesdad - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
All this and you didn't test the much loved GF4 4200??? I believe this card to be much more popular than the 4400 and I also believe many more of us currently own one...implicit1 - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
I think something is wrong in the High Quality Med Res benchmark as well. The 9800xt is being beaten by the 9800pro, maybe the numbers are switched around?cliffa3 - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
in response to the laptop question, if it burned out a vid card, don't play with it sitting on your lap...geez.Seriously tho, the thinkpads are an awesome line...the only way to go imo. You might want to wait until the mobility 9800s come out if you want a real desktop replacement for gaming...don't know if they'll show up in the thinkpad line anytime soon (or at all). I know there was a news clip a while back on anandtech about it, you might want to dig and find that.
DerekWilson - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
VortigernRed -- you were exactly right -- copied the wrong numbers over in my sleep haze.Its fixed now.
Lucid484 - Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - link
What about my GeForce 2 Ti!!!!! Which is OC to 300CPU/505RAM ...eh id prolly only get 5 fps anyway!