Quad SLI part deux: Build It Yourself

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 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.

In Quake 4, we saw some great benefits from Quad SLI - we were able to increase the anti-aliasing quality from 2x to 4x with transparency multisampling enabled and still maintain a similar frame rate. As we have already mentioned, there are no back-buffer limitations in the OpenGL API preventing NVIDIA from attaining the maximum possible performance with Quad SLI.

I've probably played more Quake 4 than any other game since I started playing around with Quad SLI a couple of weeks ago. It is one game that really stood out and came alive on the Dell 3007WFP, along with the fact we've been having frequent Quake 'o' clock death matches in the office at the end of the day. One thing that is incredibly hard to explain is just how much this game kicked ass on the Quad SLI/Dell 3007WFP combination - the immersion was simply incredible.