 Unreal Tournament
2004 |
Source: Epic |
|
Unreal
Tournament 2004 is the sequel to the highly popular UT2003 and uses the very
latest Unreal Engine technology. Unreal Tournament 2004 employs the use of
Vertex and Pixel Shaders and it's recommended that you use a DirectX 9 videocard
if you plan to play competitively.
| UT2004 |
| dm-rankin |
FPS |
Ranking |
| Albatron PX925XE Pro-R (925XE 200/400) |
90.83 |
   |
| Gigabyte GA-8ANXP-D (i925X 200/400) |
90.13 |
|
| MSI 915P Neo2 Platinum (i915P 200/400) |
83.48 |
|
| DFI LANParty 875P-T (i875P 200/400) |
83.47 |
|
| ASRock 775V88 (PT880 200/400) |
79.47 |
|
| VIA PT894 Ref Motherboard (PT894 200/400) |
85.04 |
|
| AOpen i915Pa-PLF (915P 200/400) |
90.61 |
|
| Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal (NF4-SLI 200/400
X800XT) |
85.21 |
   |
| Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal (NF4-SLI 200/400 GeForce
6600GT Single) |
83.16 |
|
| Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal (NF4-SLI 200/400 GeForce
6600GT SLI) |
79.54 |
|
| DFI LANParty NF4 SLI-DR (NF4-SLI 200/400
X800XT) |
126.91 |
   |
| DFI LANParty NF4 SLI-DR (NF4-SLI 200/400 6600GT
Single) |
125.13 |
|
| DFI LANParty NF4 SLI-DR (NF4-SLI 200/400 6600GT
SLI) |
127.46 |
|
| as-convoy |
FPS |
Ranking |
| Albatron PX925XE Pro-R (925XE 200/400) |
61.57 |
|
| Gigabyte GA-8ANXP-D (i925X 200/400) |
64.81 |
|
| MSI 915P Neo2 Platinum (i915P 200/400) |
57.92 |
|
| DFI LANParty 875P-T (i875P 200/400) |
61.11 |
|
| ASRock 775V88 (PT880 200/400) |
52.71 |
|
| VIA PT894 Ref Motherboard (PT894 200/400) |
57.8 |
|
| AOpen i915Pa-PLF (915P 200/400) |
61.34 |
|
| Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal (NF4-SLI 200/400
X800XT) |
54.7 |
|
| Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal (NF4-SLI 200/400 GeForce
6600GT Single) |
54.03 |
|
| Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal (NF4-SLI 200/400 GeForce
6600GT SLI) |
53.02 |
|
| DFI LANParty NF4 SLI-DR (NF4-SLI 200/400
X800XT) |
86.87 |
|
| DFI LANParty NF4 SLI-DR (NF4-SLI 200/400 6600GT
Single) |
87.07 |
|
| DFI LANParty NF4 SLI-DR (NF4-SLI 200/400 6600GT
SLI) |
87.62 |
|
| ctf-bridgeoffate |
FPS |
Ranking |
| Albatron PX925XE Pro-R (925XE 200/400) |
127.42 |
|
| Gigabyte GA-8ANXP-D (i925X 200/400) |
134.09 |
|
| MSI 915P Neo2 Platinum (i915P 200/400) |
119.36 |
|
| DFI LANParty 875P-T (i875P 200/400) |
129.77 |
|
| ASRock 775V88 (PT880 200/400) |
110.07 |
|
| VIA PT894 Ref Motherboard (PT894 200/400) |
118.76 |
|
| AOpen i915Pa-PLF (915P 200/400) |
126.4 |
|
| Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal (NF4-SLI 200/400
X800XT) |
120.5 |
|
| Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal (NF4-SLI 200/400 GeForce
6600GT Single) |
116.31 |
|
| Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal (NF4-SLI 200/400 GeForce
6600GT SLI) |
114.4 |
|
| DFI LANParty NF4 SLI-DR (NF4-SLI 200/400
X800XT) |
180.13 |
|
| DFI LANParty NF4 SLI-DR (NF4-SLI 200/400 6600GT
Single) |
173.16 |
|
| DFI LANParty NF4 SLI-DR (NF4-SLI 200/400 6600GT
SLI) |
178.32 |
|
The Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal comes in slightly behind the
925X/XE motherboards but not by much here. It's nice to see nVIDIA's first Intel
chipset is powerful. No benefit is gained by either platform in SLi mode, as the
low resolution tests in UT 2004 do not derive any benefit from the technology.
The AMD NForce4 test system just flies...!
Doom 3 is
the most advanced game to date. it takes advantage of the latest videocard
technology and pushes the processing power of the CPU to its absolute limit. At
its highest setting, Ultra quality, texture sizes pass the 500MB mark which
means even tomorrow's videocards will have a hard time running everything. The
frame rates in the game itself are locked at 60 fps so anything above that point
is wasted. Each test is run three times with the third run being
recorded.
| Doom3 |
| LQ 640x480: |
FPS |
Ranking |
| Albatron PX925XE Pro-R (925XE 200/400) |
84.4 |
|
| Gigabyte GA-8ANXP-D (i925X 200/400) |
88.5 |
|
| MSI 915P Neo2 Platinum (i915P 200/400) |
83.6 |
|
| DFI LANParty 875P-T (i875P 200/400) |
81.4 |
|
| ASRock 775V88 (PT880 200/400) |
79.5 |
|
| VIA PT894 Ref Motherboard (PT894 200/400) |
78.1 |
|
| AOpen i915Pa-PLF (915P 200/400) |
83.3 |
|
| Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal (NF4-SLI 200/400
X800XT) |
85.3 |
|
| Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal (NF4-SLI 200/400 GeForce
6600GT Single) |
89.9 |
|
| Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal (NF4-SLI 200/400 GeForce
6600GT SLI) |
88.1 |
|
| DFI LANParty NF4 SLI-DR (NF4-SLI 200/400
X800XT) |
115.7 |
|
| DFI LANParty NF4 SLI-DR (NF4-SLI 200/400 6600GT
Single) |
123.8 |
|
| DFI LANParty NF4 SLI-DR (NF4-SLI 200/400 6600GT
SLI) |
108.8 |
|
At low resolutions, SLI is counterproductive, but the
Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal does very well in our last benchmark.
You go nVIDIA!
A quick scan of
Pentium 4 chipsets on the market reveals that Intel owns pretty much the entire
mainstream and all of the high end. At the lower end of the scale, Intel
competes against VIA and SiS for econoline computers/motherboards but that's the
only place where the company has had to break a sweat... Until now that is.
The 'Crush 19' nForce4-SLI Intel Edition chipset will
give Intel a good run for its money. Feature-wise the Crush 19 supports any
current Socket 775 Pentium 4 that runs on a 800 MHz or 1066 MHz FSB. It's been
said that the C19 will support Intel's upcoming dual core processors but that
will need to be confirmed at a later date. The chipset also supports DDR2-667
natively and can feed a 1066 MHz Pentium 4 EE with more than enough memory
bandwidth.
Natively the Crush 19
supports 19 PCI Express lanes, 16 are reserved for the videocard/s while the
other three are for miscellaneous peripherals. If a gamer desires, they can run
two identical videocards in SLI mode just like Athlon64 nForce4-SLI based
systems. While physically the videocards use two PCI Express x16 slots, only
eight lanes would be available to each card. That's not a problem though, as
modern videocards don't even come close to using up the bandwidth even eight PCI
Express lanes offer.
Gigabyte has always been quick to market, and we're
already seeing this GA-8N-SLI Royal motherboard pop up on the internet even
though the chipset has just been released. Those of you who are in the market
for a new Pentium 4 system or motherboard should definitely hold off purchasing
until Crush 19 motherboards are available in your area. The presence of another
strong player in the chipset market should help drive prices down and we might
even see a performance/price war between Intel and nVIDIA.
The physical layout of the Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal
motherboard is excellent but we've come to expect that from Gigabyte. It's nice
to see that Gigabyte includes everything end users would need with the
motherboard as well, why can't more manufacturers follow Gigabyte's lead? A note
to those who want a nForce4-SLI powered Intel computer: You'd better have good
case cooling since the Crush 19 and MCP04 chipsets get quite hot during
operation!
In terms of performance, well you saw the benchmarks...
For the Intel platform, the Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal is simply amazing. In the
2D/Office style benchmarks the GA-8N-SLI Royal was the top Intel motherboard and
was able to best its 915/925X/925XE competition quite easily. In the 3D tests
the GA-8N-SLI Royal did well also, though it came second to the 925x
motherboards in a few of the benchmarks. The SLI performance of the GA-8N-SLI
Royal is relatively close to the AMD version which was good to see.
Though the Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal has been released by
Gigabyte, it takes a bit of time to trickle down to the retail market so we're
not sure how much the motherboard will sell for at the moment. We expect it to
be in the 925X/XE price range and if that's the case, Intel has a lot of
worrying to do since nVIDIA's Crush 19 is the real deal.
Find out
about this and many other reviews by joining the Weekly PCstats.com
Newsletter today! Catch all of PCstats latest hardware reviews right
here.
Related Articles
Here are a
few other articles that you might enjoy as well...
1. Albatron PX925XE Pro-R Motherboard
Review
RSS Newsletter
