Unreal Tournament 2003 Benchmark

This content was originally featured on Amdmb.com and has been converted to PC Perspective’s website. Some color changes and flaws may appear.

The UnrealEngine is one of the most popular game engines used by game developers and publishers today. With a large amount of titles using it such as Rainbow Six: Raven Shield, Splinter Cell, Unreal 2, and the upcoming Tribes: Vengeance, it is important to see how well a video card performs with this particular engine.

  • Unreal Tournament 2003 has been chosen as the UnrealEngine benchmark as it is a good test for DirectX 8.1b as well as a benchmark for multiplayer UnrealEngine games.
  • The map Asbestos was chosen to demonstrate the card’s ability to render strictly interior environments.
  • The map Face3 was chosen to demonstrate the card’s ability to render predominantly exterior environments.
  • “Playable” means that the average FPS is 40fps or above and lowest FPS is not lower than 20fps. This criteria may be different for you, but I suspect many of you consider this to be acceptable. We all like to play at 60 FPS or higher, but in reality, we should be just fine with 40. 🙂

MSI Ti4800SE-VTD8X Video Card Review - Graphics Cards 17 MSI Ti4800SE-VTD8X Video Card Review - Graphics Cards 18

Understanding the Numbers
I have categorized each benchmark into a resolution group: 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1600×1200. Each of these groups have a high and low detail test and each test includes all combinations of Anti-aliasing and Anisotropic filtering options.

The average FPS is important as it tells us what we can typically expect from the card running at that level of detail at the given resolution. The minumum FPS number is also critical as it shows us how poorly the card can run. The maximum FPS isn’t all that important here since in a typical game you will not beMSI Ti4800SE-VTD8X Video Card Review - Graphics Cards 19staring at a wall, instead you will be in the middle of the action — therefore the lowest and average FPS are most useful to us.

UT2K3 Benchmark. 1024x768. high details. Asbestos map.

UT2K3 Benchmark. 1024x768. Low details. Asbestos map.

At 1024×768 resolution, the MSI Ti4800SE-VTD8X is very much playable at all levels of detail with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering turned on. On low details, the card is very capable of rendering the interior environment at all levels of AA and AF. However, once you introduce some extra players and some intense gameplay, you will probably be better off with 2×4 AAxAF with high details or with moderate details with 4×4 or 4×2.

UT2K3 Benchmark. 1280x1024. high details. Asbestos map.

UT2K3 Benchmark. 1280x1024. Low details. Asbestos map.

At 1280×1024 resultion, you start seeing the card beginning to struggle. The number of playable levels of detail drops dramatically at high details – instead of being able to play the game at 100% of levels like at 1024×768, you see that only about 50% is playable. Whereas on low details, everything is playable, but 4×8 may be too poor for many of you.

If you want to play with both anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering on, you are better off at 1024×768 or staying at 1280×1024 and adjusting your details a bit. At 1280×1024 on high details the card does not seem to handle any combination of AA and AF together, so tweak accordingly.

UT2K3 Benchmark. 1600x1200. high details. Asbestos map.

UT2K3 Benchmark. 1600x1200. Low details. Asbestos map.

At 1600×1200 at high details, the card is pretty much unplayable except at 0x0 AAxAF. At low details, you see that the card can handle about 50% of the AAxAF tests. However at this high resolution, anti-aliasing becomes less important. I suspect that by compromising on details and enabling anisotropic filtering, you may actually get some playble framerates.

UT2K3 Benchmark. 1024x768. Low details. Face3 map.

UT2K3 Benchmark. 1024x768. high details. Face3 map.

Unlike the results of DM-Asbestos, we see the videocard struggling right from the start with high details. In a purely interior environement in Asbestos, we see an average of 45FPs at 4×8 AAxAF, but now we see a dismal 5 FPS average on the same setting on CTF-Face 3. In low details the card is still capable of running 4×8 in a flyby, but may prove to be too much when you throw in some buddies (or enemies) on a server. Since most UT2K3 maps involve an outdoor environment in some way, I suggest going with a more relaxed AA, AF, and detail settings to ensure balanced performance throughout a map rotation.

UT2K3 Benchmark. 1280x1024. high details. Face3 map.

UT2K3 Benchmark. 1280x1024. Low details. Face3 map.

I suspect many of you are looking to play at this resolution, so these benchmarks are particularly interesting to you. Seeing how high details is not an option here, the “sweet spot” is going to lie somewhere with medium details at 2×2 to 2×4 AAxAF settings.

UT2K3 Benchmark. 1600x1200. high details. Face3 map.

UT2K3 Benchmark. 1600x1200. Low details. Face3 map.

As we’ll see with other games, performance at the 1600×1200 level is not particularly awe-inspiring. Don’t expect to turn on any AA and AF features here and get decent frame rates without having to compromise on details. As stated earlier, anti-aliasing is less important at 1600×1200, therefore anisotropic filtering is what most of you want to use here.

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