Inno3D GeForce 7950 GT

24'' Widescreen Gaming:

Quake 4

Publisher: Activision

We used the full retail version of Quake 4 patched to version 1.3.0. It is the fourth game in the Quake series, based on the technically-sound Doom 3 engine. However, unlike Doom 3, we found that the game benefits from at least 2x anti-aliasing, and the experience with anti-aliasing at a slightly lower resolution was better than increasing the resolution with no AA applied.

Both anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering were controlled from inside the game. When you select "High Quality" mode, 4xAF is automatically enabled, and when the "Ultra Quality" mode is enabled, 8xAF is automatically applied to the scene. We forced anisotropic filtering values via the console using "image_anisotropy".

We did a manual run through from a five minute section of the Nexus Hub Tunnels level and found that a minimum of 15 frames per second and an average of 45-50 frames per second in our test section was deemed to be playable across the rest of the title.

The lower clocks on the Inno3D GeForce 7950 GT meant that we had to disable transparency supersampling in order to maintain smooth gameplay. On the other hand, the XFX GeForce 7950 GT 570M Extreme was able to play the game with transparency supersampling turned on. The gaming experience was similar on both video cards, although the lower transparency anti-aliasing quality had some small effects in certain areas of the title.

ATI’s Radeon X1900XT 512MB and Radeon X1900XT 256MB delivered similar gaming experiences in Quake 4 and the two were generally comparable to the BFG Tech GeForce 7900 GT OC. Having said that though, the latter delivered an appreciably smoother gaming experience.

The filtering quality issues didn't seem to plague NVIDIA in Quake 4, so while ATI’s high quality anisotropic filtering delivered sharper textures in the distance; it wasn't massively noticeable when playing the game as a typical gamer would do. Anyone serious about playing Quake 4 would be better choosing one of NVIDIA’s GeForce 7950 GT cards.