NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GS

Quake 4

Publisher: Activision

We used the full retail version of Quake 4, 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 did a manual run through from a five minute section of the Nexus Hub Tunnels level and found that a minimum of 20 frames per second and an average of 50 frames per second in our test section was deemed to be playable across the rest of the title.

The XFX GeForce 6800 GT was the fastest video card in this title - it delivered a smooth gaming experience at 1024x768 2xAA 4xAF High Quality with a minimum frame rate of 26 frames per second. We tried 4xAA at 1024x768, but there wasn't quite enough performance there for the video card to run the game as smooth as we'd like. It was also possible to play the game at 1280x1024 0xAA 4xAF High Quality, but we felt that the game looked better with 2xAA enabled.

The GeForce 6800 GS was not too far behind the XFX 6800 GT, delivering a minimum frame rate of 23 frames per second at the same detail settings. 1280x1024 was a little choppier than we would have liked, so 1024x768 2xAA 4xAF with High Quality details was the best settings for this video card.

The Catalyst 5.10a drivers are said to improve performance in OpenGL games on Radeon X1000-series products. However, we did not see the performance gap closed on the older products derived from R420. The Club 3D Radeon X800XL was best-playable at 1024x768 0xAA 4xAF High Quality, while the HIS X800GTO iTurbo had to be dropped to 1024x768 0xAA 0xAF Medium Quality in order to attain a smooth frame rate. There were too many occasions where we experienced hitching on the HIS X800GTO iTurbo with High Quality mode in this title.