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Review: Intel 925X Express Chipset
and Pentium 4 3.4 EE CPU Review
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3
Benchmarks
The venerable Falcon
4 has received a recent
overhaul with the release of SuperPAK
4.1. We tested the beloved
sim with SimHQ’s new demo, a low level, air-to-ground
dusk mission that consists of two Falcons using Mk20s and
Mavericks. The outbound flight route takes the Falcons over
the city and straight into trouble.
Even with a high-end processor such
as the 3.4EE, Falcon 4’s performance still remains tied
to the CPU as it loses only 10% across the resolutions tested.
Moving on to land combat, Far
Cry is perhaps the most demanding title currently available
in terms of hardware needed to run the game smoothly. Unfortunately,
the game’s demo recording utility does not capture all
graphical effects, such as gunfire, when used, so the testing
method chosen was to load a map and basically play through
it in its entirety, again using Fraps to log the frame rates.
The map Research was picked because it consists of a good
mix of beach, jungle, and interior play areas that represent
the different environments of the game. Far Cry’s files
were edited to allow God mode during testing, and what follows
is a brief description of the path taken through the Research
map during each test.
The level begins on a small island.
Moving to the top of the grassy knoll for a good position,
we would then use the sniper rifle to zoom in on enemies across
the water. Once out of ammo, we would cross the water heading
toward the stone arch along the beach. A helicopter is usually
called in at this point, so we would hide beneath the arch
until the ‘copter drops off additional enemy troops and
flies off. Moving forward, there is a hill to the right where
a good firefight ensues with the reinforcements. Once these
enemies are dispatched, we would move toward the cliffs, up
into the more dense vegetation in the direction of the shack.
Grabbing the security card inside the shack we would then
use the mortar to clear out any remaining enemies along the
beach before heading down the hill on the left and into the
cave. Upon reaching the T section in the cave we would go
right, clearing enemies until reaching the power switch, and
then move toward the elevator room, finishing the level by
entering the elevator. The highest recorded frame rates occurred
while in the elevator, so the test was ended immediately upon
entering the lift.
There was a problem between Fraps
2.2.1 and Far Cry when recording was started, causing the
game to momentarily freeze for a second and resulting in a
false score for the lowest recorded frame rate. Regardless,
the game scaled fairly consistently with the resolution increases.
It will be very interesting to see what, if any, performance
gains are realized with the GeForce 6 chips and the anticipated
1.2 patch and its Shader Model 3.0 support.
For Call
of Duty (v1.4), the most recent game in a seemingly
new industry of WW2 shooters, the included Dawnville map demo
was used with the game’s timedemo utility. The “com_maxfps”
command was used to remove the in-game default frame rate
limit of 85 (even with Vsync disabled), setting the cap to
500.
Based on the aging Quake 3 engine,
Call of Duty scales extremely well with faster processors,
as indicated by the scores above.
NASCAR
Racing 2003 Season is SimHQ’s lone motorsports
test. Testing was conducted with an in-house demo that makes
use of a crowded Daytona track. The camera was locked to Earnhardt’s
car and placed in cockpit mode. As usual, all game options
were fixed at their maximum settings.
Even at the resolution of 1600x1200
and a full track, the frame rates remained high enough to
provide smooth gameplay. Nascar, however, is clearly CPU-limited
as only a small variation occurred in the frame rates.
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