Unreal Tournament 2003 |
Source: Epic |
|
Unreal Tournament 2003 is the sequel to 1999's
multiple 'Game of the Year' award winner. It uses the very latest Unreal Engine
technology - where graphics, sound and game play are taken beyond
the bleeding edge. Unreal Tournament 2003 employs the use of Vertex as well as
Pixel Shaders and it's recommended that you use a DirectX 8 videocard to get the
most out of the game.
In UT2003
there's simply no competition to the Athlon64 systems like that of the Albatron
K8X800Pro II.
At stock speeds the Albatron K8X800 Pro II and MSI K8T Neo
perform on par with each other, with a slight edge in favour of former.
Albatron's first Athlon 64 motherboard!
There's
a saying better late then never and I think that's very true when we talk about
the Athlon64 and Athlon64 FX processors. If AMD had released the chips we see today last
year as planned, it would have seriously upset Intel. While the supply of Athlon64 3200+ and Athlon64
FX51 processors is still slim, there is a very bright future ahead for these remarkable
chips.
While everyone else is trying to target the mainstream users, Albatron
know that it's the enthusiasts who are most likely to adopt the Athlon64 right now, and their K8X800 Pro
II is directly targeted towards that very crowd. Why else would they use a copper
Northbridge cooler, or give the end user so many voltage options?
Performance
of the Albatron K8X800 ProII motherboard was indeed very good, but it seemed to
trail the MSI K8T Neo in 3D applications. If you're an overclocker the K8X800 Pro
II is certainly a very enticing option as it allows you to use
multipliers lower then 10x. Our particular board maxed out at 245 MHz but we were also able
to overclock the processor and memory higher on the Albatron K8X800 Pro II than with
the MSI K8T Neo thanks to the better functioning voltage options.
With a 3Com Gigabit LAN controller, Serial ATA, VIA's
new Envy 24PT 7.1 soundcard, IEEE 1394 and dual BIOS's the board may seem a bit
bare on the old IDE/SATA Raid front, but then again, there are six PCI slots available if you need
more storage devices. Retail price of the Albatron K8X800 ProII is not clear
yet, but I would expect it to go for in the range of $200-250 CDN. If
you're considering jumping on the socket 754 Athlon64 bandwagon you're probably already an enthusiast, and that is
exactly who Albatron have built the K8X800 Pro II motherboard to satisfy!
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