Introduction and Test Bed Setup

First person shooters and UT

Well, I should not have to explain why we love them, or why we continue to play the newest ones. Is it the gore? Is it the multiplayer action that pits you against the world? Control perhaps? Who knows... What I do know is that Atari, Digital Extremes, and Epic Games has given us another fantastic installment of the UT series in Unreal Tournament 2004. This game boasts beautiful graphics, tons of new game options and modes, allows for more customizing, the ability to use air and land vehicles, and so on and so forth. I can almost guess that this will be the First Person Shooter GOTY. Dare I say more? Nah, on to the updated test bed…

Testbed setup and explanation

Since my Need for Speed Underground Optimization Guide, I have upgraded my hardware (video cards) and am now running these benchmarks using two separate dedicated machines. Below are the pictures of the machines, cards, and a listing of all the hardware in each of them. Here we go!

Pentium 4 2.8 Machine.	AMD Athlon XP 2600+ Machine.
My Workspace!	All the cards used in this guide!

Intel System Setup

Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz

ASUS P4S8X

768MB DDR333 Memory

20GB Western Digital Hard Drive

Windows XP Professional SP1

DirectX 9.0b

Unreal Tournament 2004: Version 3186

Unreal Tournament 2004 (T3 custom demo)

AMD System Setup

AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (T-Bred)

FIC AU11

768 MB DDR333 Memory

10GB Western Digital Hard Drive

Windows XP Professional SP1

DirectX 9.0b

Unreal Tournament 2004: Version 3186

Unreal Tournament 2004 (T3 custom demo)

Video Cards used for Testing

ATI Radeon 9800XT
Tyan Tachyon G9500 Pro (unlocked)
ATI RADEON 8500
Driver Catalyst Version 4.4

Nvidia GeForce FX 5700U (GDDR3) Reference Board
ASUS V9280S Ti4200 8X
Chaintech A-G481 MX440 8X
Driver Forceware Version 56.72

Pre-Game Attributes

Below I have posted the pre-game attributes and settings for all ATI cards to give you a better understanding of how this machine is setup prior to initialization of UT2K4.

9800XT, Not using optional cooling.
9500Pro, Great card!	8500, Mainstream ATI card.

Here are the settings for the the Nvidia cards:

5700U, Nice Board.

Ti4200, Mainstream variety.

MX440, Value card.

*Test Notes: This is not a video card comparison article, but an optimization guide for various cards. Value cards were tested at 800x600 and 1024x768. Mainstream cards tested at 800x600, 1024x768, and 1280x1024. The high-end card was tested at 1024x768 and 1280x1024. All cards were tested using both normal and maximum (highest, high) settings under the video options menu of the main menu. All resolutions are at 32-bit using the default Direct3D option. Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering were enabled only on the RADEON 9800XT to keep the article at a reasonable length.