Quake III Arena performance (677 MHz CPU speed)
Now we're overclocking the CPU and
running the card at its stock speed. No matter what visual mode I used the
clock is past or pushing 100 FPS except for the Normal and High Quality results
with 1280x1024. 800x600 in High Quality netted 98.2 FPS. An interesting result
was that 1280x1024 in High Quality netted 45 FPS - a near identical result
to the 44.7 FPS in 500(200/333). At that high a resolution even raising the
CPU speed can't send data to the card fast enough. However, 1280x1024 netted
85.7 FPS in Normal mode. Guess which mode I'd recommend if you like to play
1280x1024?
Here's where we see the benefits
of overclocking the CPU and the card. In Fastest mode there was less than
1 FPS between 640x480 and 800x600. 113 FPS is definately impressive considering
how many CPUs out there can go much faster than 667 MHz. We're still passing
100 FPS with 800x600 in High Quality. 1280x1024 only scored 51 FPS - again
within 1% of its score at the stock core/memory speed of this card. You better
be pushing 1 GHz with your CPU if you plan to play 1280x1024 in High Quality
mode. 1280x1024 saw a nice boost to 91 FPS in Normal mode. Again the results
speak for themselves: 1280x1024 will see great performance in Normal mode,
unless they are willing to chuck over a large amount of change for a seriously
fast CPU.
