NVIDIA's GeForce 6600GT on AGP

Need For Speed: Underground 2 Demo

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Image Quality:

We have used the readily-available demo version of Need For Speed: Underground 2 to represent a typical driving simulator - it's based on the DirectX 9.0 API, and makes use of lots of DirectX 9.0 features, including motion blur and light trails. We have controlled Anti-Aliasing from inside the game, while Anisotropic Filtering was controlled via the driver control panel. We used the only track that is included in the demo for our manual run through.

We were able to run both video cards with the same in-game detail and resolution settings. Anti-Aliasing was controlled from within the game and equated to 2xAA, while Anisotropic Filtering was set to 4x in the driver's control panel. These settings delivered very solid frame rates for both video cards, and we opted for a touch of Anti-Aliasing over high Anisotropic Filtering.

It was also possible to use alternative settings of 1024x768 with 16xAF, but we felt that the image quality wasn't quite to the same standard as what we settled on. This is due to the extreme jaggies that were appearing around the car and also on the surrounding scenery.

Our preferences here lie firmly on the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro - the image looks sharp and solid. The GeForce 6600GT's image quality is very poor, the whole scene is very blurred and it generally lacks detail and crispness. If there was a weak point on this video card, it seems to have become apparent here.

The sky and background textures are rather disappointing on both video cards, but we understand that this is a game issue and not a driver or screen grab issue - we went to great details in examining the quality of the sky on both video cards, and quite frankly we are rather disappointed. The sky looks as if it flooded with jpeg artefacts, and we get the impression that EA have almost forgotten to finish off the project that they started.

Performance:

The average frame rate appears to be very low, but thanks to the very high minimum frame rate, we were able to enjoy a very good gaming experience at the settings that we have chosen on the Radeon 9800 Pro, while the GeForce 6600GT was let down by it's lacklustre image quality in this title. Despite the fact that the GeForce 6600GT provided a smoother gaming experience, the problems with image quality that have been discussed here have proven that frame rates aren't everything - if you fail to deliver good image quality, then the gamer is ultimately let down, and will suffer from a below-average gaming experience in the title concerned.