Comprehensive Video Benchmarks

Crusader writes: "Matt Matthews has produced an extensive series of benchmarks which examine four separate games' performance on the Voodoo5, the Rage 128 Pro, the G400 Max, and the GeForce 2 3D graphics cards under Linux. Performance against Windows 98 is also included." We also received: driveitlikeyoustoleit writes, "3dfx, NVIDIA and ATI's best are all pitted against each other in a high-end 3D video card roundup. The authors pit six GeForce2 GTS (from ASUS, Creative, ELSA and Hercules) based cards against an ATI Radeon 256 and a 3dfx Voodoo5 5500. Performance for a change isn't the only criteria in question (although the end scores are somewhat weighted in favor of fps) but also at full-scene anti-aliasing, image quality and DVD performance/quality are critically looked at. The screen shots page showing off FSAA comparisons are great visual indicators of what the cards can do."

Comments

not much "real world" in that review

[nehril]

I get the impression that Sharky's reviewers have sort of lost touch with the real world a bit. They talk about how one card is better than another because it has TV-out or TV-in... yet how many hardcore gamers use such a feature? would a hardcore gamer (sharky's intended audience) EVER play Q3 on a fuzzy, 640x480 television? Would anyone even drag their rig out into the living room?

All this from the same crew who benchmarks Q3 at 1600x1200, and spits on any card that loses that race (how many ppl have monitors that can do 1600x1200 at 100 hz anyways?)

They rated the Elsa card as SuperFantasticGetOneOrDie, yet the identical Powergene card was rated as "bleh," for those "those on an extremely tight budget" (the powergene is only $10 less than the elsa.) But according to the reviewer "you don't get a name brand" with the powergene, so stay away unless you are ghetto. Reality check anyone? BOTH cards are stock reference designs, except for a possible future tv in/out module for the elsa.

Also, by reading these "shootouts" one would get the impression that quake 3 is the only game on the market. If they benchmark some other game, it has to be a quake clone. I play the Quake series to death, but I also play strategy games like Homeworld (which can bring a video card/cpu to its KNEES during intense battles.) Where is the benchmark on some non-FPS game?

How about image quality? I personally turn on FSAA on my Geforce when playing Homeworld at 800x600, because it looks SO much better than 1024/768 without FSAA. If sharky reviewers would play something besides FPSs then stuff like image quality would get ranked way higher.

Anyways, thats the end of my rant. Whenever you read one of these reviews, keep in mind the biases of the reviewer, and remember that they sometimes get caught up in "reviewerland," which is not necessarily connected to the "real world."