Big GPU-Shootout; Part III, PCIe 1.0 vs. PCIe 2.0
Unreal Tournament3
Unreal Tournament3
Unreal Tournament3 (UT3) is the fourth game in the Unreal Tournament series. UT3 is a first-person shooter and online multiplayer video game by Epic Games. It was released for Windows on November, 2007. While many games share the same Unreal3 engine, the developers can decide how high the system requirements will be by increasing the level of detail. Unreal Tournament3 provides a good balance between image quality and performance, rendering complex scenes even on lower-end PCs. Of course, on high-end graphics cards you can really turn up the detail. UT3 is primarily an online multiplayer title offering several game modes and it also includes an offline single-player game with a campaign.
For our tests, we used the latest game patch for Unreal Tournament3. The game doesn’t have a built-in benchmarking tool, however, so we used FRAPS as well as HardwareOC’s benchmark tool which does a fly-by of a chosen level. Here we note that performance numbers reported are a bit higher than compared to in-game. The map we use is called “Containment” and it is one of the most demanding of the fly-bys. Our tests were run at resolutions of 1920 x 1200 and 1680 x 1050 with the UT3’s in-game graphical options set to their maximum values. One drawback of the way the UT3 engine is designed is that there is no support for anti-aliasing built in. While video card vendors have found ways to force this in their driver’s control panels, we did not force it. Again, we use the “timedemo-style” of benchmark for UT3. A “demo” is recorded in the game and a set number of frames are saved in a file for playback. When playing back the demo, the game engine then renders the frames as quickly as possible, which is why you will often see the it playing it back more quickly than you would actually play the game.
Containment Demo
It is starting to become somewhat predictable. GTX280 shows the superiority of the X48 motherboard over it’s P35 predecessor while 4870 is more mixed. Even the 4870-1GB version did not convincingly prove superior to the 512MB version here, so we need to test with AA ‘forced’ next time; ditto for 4870-X2. CrossfireX-3 with 1GB 4870 in the second slot is generally faster where it is more important at the minimums, but we are not straining it with these tests.
Curious, why’d you set Catalyst A.I. to “Advanced”?
How about a few links to explanations of Catalyst AI and what “advanced” really does? Here is an old article on it:
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjY2LDI=
Here is the tweak guide which supports my own research:
http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_7.html
“Catalyst A.I. allows users to determine the level of ‘optimizations’ the drivers enable in graphics applications. These optimizations are graphics ‘short cuts’ which the Catalyst A.I. calculates to attempt to improve the performance of 3D games without any noticeable reduction in image quality. In the past there has been a great deal of controversy about ‘hidden optimizations’, where both Nvidia and ATI were accused of cutting corners, reducing image quality in subtle ways by reducing image precision for example, simply to get higher scores in synthetic benchmarks like 3DMark. In response to this, both ATI and Nvidia have made the process transparent to a great extent. You can select whether you want to enable or disable Catalyst A.I. for a further potential performance boost in return for possibly a slight reduction in image quality in some cases. If Catalyst AI is enabled, you can also choose the aggressiveness of such optimizations, either Standard or Advanced on the slider. The Advanced setting ensures maximum performance, and usually results in no problems or any noticeable image quality reduction. If on the other hand you want to always ensure the highest possible image quality at all costs, disable Catalyst A.I. (tick the ‘Disable Catalyst A.I.’ box). I recommend leaving Catalyst A.I enabled unless you experience problems. ATI have made it clear that many application-specific optimizations for recent games such as Oblivion are dependent on Catalyst AI being enabled.
Note: As of the 6.7 Catalysts, Crossfire users should set Catalyst A.I. to Advanced to force Alternate Frame Rendering (AFR) mode in all Direct3D games for optimal performance. Once again, Catalyst A.I. should only be disabled for troubleshooting purposes, such as if you notice image corruption in particular games”
In other words, one can choose the aggressiveness of your optimizations, either “Standard” or “Advanced”. The Advanced setting ensures maximum performance – as for benchmarking games – and with no noticeable image quality reduction. However, if you are doing IQ comparisons as BFG10K did, and want to guarantee the very highest image quality, then disable Catalyst A.I. [but not for crossfire; set it to “Standard”]. I have always recommended leaving Catalyst A.I enabled unless you experience any glitches in games.
You have to realize that Cat AI is not necessarily supposed to give you a boost in every single game. It tries to do optimizations, if possible, but many times these are either not possible with a particular game, or the settings you’ve chosen in the game may be too low for it to make any noticeable impact.
That is why I recommend leaving it on “Advanced”; you get a possisble performance boost; if not then you lose nothing. Or you can set it to standard or off if you feel your image quality is being degraded.
Hope that explains it.
Very interesting, I’ll definitely be I check your site on a regular basis now.