Benchmark: Splinter Cell
Test Setup
Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow was selected for testing due to its rich graphics and heavy reliance upon shadowing techniques. For testing, the latest 1.1 patch was installed to ensure the hgihest compatibility and performance. In terms of settings, every graphics setting was maximized while the audio quality was minimized to avoid any potential bottlenecks.
For each card, all settings were set to “Quality” mode with V-Sync disabled. Specifically on the NVIDIA cards, the option for Trilinear Optimizations was disabled to force “true” trilinear filtering.
Despite being such a low resolution, we can already see the GeForce 6800 Ultra differentiate itself from the other cards in terms of performance. Although the cards initially start out with the same relative framerates, the gap begins to widen as we get further into the game and complexity increases.
Here, we see the three cards mirroring one another at different scales. Although the pattern is uniform throughout the run, the GeForce 6800 Ultra typically shows a 10fps advantage at any given point over its competitors.
Although not timed perfectly, you can clearly see the pattern within the results of these cards. As was the case at the previous resolution, the GeForce 6800 Ultra holds roughly a 10fps advantage over the Radeon 9800XT.
