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
you can play with either 2x or QC AA enabled - anything higher and frame rates
dip too much to be competitive. Enabling AF doesn't degrade performance much,
but when both AA and AF are used, it's a bit slow.
Conclusions
For those of you who like new
technology, 2004 has definitely been an exciting year so far. Both Intel and AMD
are trying to push the market in new directions, and that means there is plenty
of new and tasty technology to test out. Looking back at recent years, I can't
recall a time when so many changes have taken place all at once...
As the traditionally architecture had become too large a
bottleneck, the PCI-Express transition had to happen sooner or later. With Intel
forcing several changes all at once, it should prove much less expensive, and
much less troublesome for everyone in the long run. Perhaps more importantly,
for manufacturers it provides a shot in the arm, and just about guarantees that
the new technologies will be adopted.
As a videocard, the MSI PCX5750-TD128 is one of the first PCI
Express solutions out of the gate, and comes with an exceptional software
package. Three full version games are included; XIII, Prince of Persia: The
Sands of Time and Uru as well as a whole host of multimedia software. Bundled
extra's are nice, but it's the performance figures that really play out in the
long run. From that standpoint, the MSI PCX5750-TD128 is a good