Doom 3
Publisher: Activision
Image Quality:
We’re using the full retail version of Doom 3 patched to version 1.1 and we used a section of the "Alpha Labs 1" level to do a manual run through for the purposes of this comparison. Anti-Aliasing was not used, but Anisotropic Filtering was configured from inside the game, and thus we’ve left the drivers set to "Application Controlled".
Due to the darkness of Doom 3, we find that increasing the resolution has greater image quality benefits than applying AA to a lower resolution. In the case of these entry level video cards, we found that increasing the resolution also paid dividends over increasing the quality settings, providing they could deliver a smooth gaming experience at the higher resolution setting.
Unfortunately for both the ABIT RX600 Pro-Guru and the Radeon X300, we were unable to attain a smooth gaming experience at a higher resolution than 640x480 with our entry level system specification. We feel that increasing the CPU speed and memory will enable us to run a slightly higher resolution, but that would not be a pretty evenly matched system. Using ABIT’s XTurbo clock speeds did not help to increase the resolution either - we did try running at 800x600 with Low Quality, but suffered large amounts of choppiness through a portion of the level that is used for my manual run throughs. Unfortunately, it just seemed too much for ABIT’s RX600 Pro-Guru to handle.
The GeForce 6600 is in a league of it’s own in this title and it really does give all cards here a hefty work out - it was capable of solid, and playable frame rates at 1024x768 0xAA 8xAF - quite amazing for a video card that costs around £80-90. We all know that Doom 3 is NVIDIA’s baby - the GeForce 6200 TurboCache also provided a nice surprise, being capable of smooth game play at 800x600 with Low Quality.
Apart from the obvious differences caused by differing resolution settings and increased detail settings, we saw no differences or glitches in the image quality delivered by all of these cards. The big winner here is the GeForce 6600, being able to enable High Quality details, including 8xAF at 1024x768. The actual differences between Low Quality and Medium Quality details are pretty small too - something worth noting for future reference.
Performance:
As already stated, we found it very hard to get anything higher than 640x480 with Medium Quality details playable on the ABIT RX600 Pro-Guru, even when running in the XTurbo mode after switching the jumper over. It is a shame, because the image quality achieved at that resolution is of a high standard, despite running with the Medium Quality in-game details. Some of you may be wondering why the minimum frame rate for the ABIT’s XTurbo mode is much higher than the other video cards here - at 800x600 with Low Quality, the minimum frame rate dropped to 15 frames per second, and well below 30 frames per second for a large portion of the manual run through section, it was far from a smooth gaming experience.
Publisher: Activision
Image Quality:
We’re using the full retail version of Doom 3 patched to version 1.1 and we used a section of the "Alpha Labs 1" level to do a manual run through for the purposes of this comparison. Anti-Aliasing was not used, but Anisotropic Filtering was configured from inside the game, and thus we’ve left the drivers set to "Application Controlled".
Due to the darkness of Doom 3, we find that increasing the resolution has greater image quality benefits than applying AA to a lower resolution. In the case of these entry level video cards, we found that increasing the resolution also paid dividends over increasing the quality settings, providing they could deliver a smooth gaming experience at the higher resolution setting.
Unfortunately for both the ABIT RX600 Pro-Guru and the Radeon X300, we were unable to attain a smooth gaming experience at a higher resolution than 640x480 with our entry level system specification. We feel that increasing the CPU speed and memory will enable us to run a slightly higher resolution, but that would not be a pretty evenly matched system. Using ABIT’s XTurbo clock speeds did not help to increase the resolution either - we did try running at 800x600 with Low Quality, but suffered large amounts of choppiness through a portion of the level that is used for my manual run throughs. Unfortunately, it just seemed too much for ABIT’s RX600 Pro-Guru to handle.
The GeForce 6600 is in a league of it’s own in this title and it really does give all cards here a hefty work out - it was capable of solid, and playable frame rates at 1024x768 0xAA 8xAF - quite amazing for a video card that costs around £80-90. We all know that Doom 3 is NVIDIA’s baby - the GeForce 6200 TurboCache also provided a nice surprise, being capable of smooth game play at 800x600 with Low Quality.
Apart from the obvious differences caused by differing resolution settings and increased detail settings, we saw no differences or glitches in the image quality delivered by all of these cards. The big winner here is the GeForce 6600, being able to enable High Quality details, including 8xAF at 1024x768. The actual differences between Low Quality and Medium Quality details are pretty small too - something worth noting for future reference.
Performance:
As already stated, we found it very hard to get anything higher than 640x480 with Medium Quality details playable on the ABIT RX600 Pro-Guru, even when running in the XTurbo mode after switching the jumper over. It is a shame, because the image quality achieved at that resolution is of a high standard, despite running with the Medium Quality in-game details. Some of you may be wondering why the minimum frame rate for the ABIT’s XTurbo mode is much higher than the other video cards here - at 800x600 with Low Quality, the minimum frame rate dropped to 15 frames per second, and well below 30 frames per second for a large portion of the manual run through section, it was far from a smooth gaming experience.
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