We recently got an ATI X1800XL video card in for test, which will be reviewed soon. Due to code changes every few months or so with HL2 it’s an unreliable benchmark and I’ve decided to drop the benchmark from our reviews. Two new games have been released which are representative of the latest in game technology: F.E.A.R. and Quake4. I recorded my own timedemo of a level of Quake4 with over 11,000 frames rendered. Each run of the benchmark takes upwards of 3 minutes and is a decent representation of performance over a long period of time instead of just a minute for a regular timedemo. Be aware that Quake4 timedemos have rendering issues, missing shadows on every card. However, the output of the benchmark is the same on every card NVIDIA or ATI and makes for a fair comparison.

Test Hardware
3.4GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition CPU
1GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2 667MHz memory
2 34GB WD Raptor SATA HDDs
GIGABYTE 6600GV-NX66T256DE running 81.85 Forceware WHQL
ASUS P5N32-SLI motherboard running 6.67 Forceware nForce drivers
Windows XP with SP2
ASUS 16X DVD-ROM

Test Software
F.E.A.R 1024x768 1280x1024 no AA no AF, 4x AA 8x AF
Quake4 Timedemo 1024x768 1280x1024 no AA no AF, 4x AA 8x AF
Far Cry 1024x768 1280x1024 no AA no AF 4x AA 8x AF
Doom 3 Timedemo 1024x768 1280x1024 no AA no AF 4x AA 8x AF
Halo
Aquamark 3
3Dmark05
3Dmark03
Serious Sam The Second Encounter Little Trouble Demo
Gunmetal Benchmark 2 Benchmark 1 and 2
Final Fantasy XI the Benchmark 2