nForce 2 Socket A Motherboard Round-up

Gaming – FarCry, UT2K4

FarCry

FarCry is a DirectX 9 game that uses a lot of vertex shading and maps of monstrous size (usually most of it viewable from a vantage point). Often in our Gaming Forum, there would be a cry for better performance or general questions on how this game would run on X system configuration.

The following results were taken at Medium detail settings on 1024×768, “low” anti-aliasing, and 20 minutes of gameplay to reduce sampling anomalies.

*Asus A7N8X-E memory at 202MHz, rest at 200MHz.

All perform really well in this test. Considering how large the levels can get and how intense the action, average frame rates in the 50FPS range is really good considering the price/performance ratio of our test system.

UnrealTournament 2004

UT2K4 improves on the 2003 edition by adding features like much larger maps and vehicles. The following test was done on a large Onslaught map on a server with 12 players for 20 minutes. All details are set on “High”, all effects enabled, and played at 1280×1024.

*Asus A7N8X-E memory at 202MHz, rest at 200MHz.

Examining the chart above, we can see that given any of the four motherboards, you can expect most of your gameplay to be in the 40+ FPS range, which is usually the lowest acceptable frame rate gamers tolerate. Of all the motherboards sampled, none exhibited any unusual clustering of samples below the “unplayable” 30FPS mark.