Unreal Tournament 3 CPU & High End GPU Analysis: Next-Gen Gaming Explored
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on October 17, 2007 3:35 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Multi-Core Gaming is Upon Us
Epic's Unreal Engine 3 is well threaded, it must be in order to run on the multi-core Microsoft and Sony consoles, and thus us multi-core PC users benefit.
Intel has been waiting for a real reason to push quad-core gaming for a while now, will UT3 be that reason?
We don't often look at single-core performance given how cheap dual-core CPUs are today, but it's important to look at where we've come from over the past couple of years.
One to two cores gives us an impressive 60% increase in performance on average, if we look back at our first dual-core processor review none of our gaming tests showed any performance increase from one to two cores. From 0 - 60% in two years isn't bad at all.
The performance improvement from 2 to 4 cores isn't anywhere near as impressive, but still reasonable. In our first two tests we see a 9% increase and the third one gives us a 20% boost, for an average 13% jump in performance.
If 3D games follow the same trend that we've seen over the past two years, it'll be another two years from now before we really see significant performance increases from quad-core processors. If in 2009 we hardly bother with dual-core chips because quad-core is so prevalent, you'll not hear any complaining from us.
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retrospooty - Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - link
The demo is not full detail, its a playable test with lower image settings than the final game. Wait and see the final before we see what its "supposed" to look like.shabby - Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - link
If its really going to look like these pics then this performance review is useless, fps will drop by half. Im hoping you're right, but im betting epic simply polished up those pics to wow everyone.imaheadcase - Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - link
Yah, i downloaded the demo. I was really disappointed. It gets boring really fast, like Quake Wars does. Nothing really innovating in terms of graphics, or fun factor, or "repeatability" over long term.I think TF2 ruined all these games. lol
Pjotr - Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - link
This text does not match the graphs posted, where the max gain was 4.4% for ShangriLa, the other two tests showed close to 0% difference. Analysis mistake, graph error, typo or what?
Frallan - Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - link
Well since many of us today (yes even I bought one) has started to use Lappys and there is ones out now that where it is possible to play a view on how a 8600 GT w 512DDR2 and 256 DDR3 does would be nice and from 1680*1050 downwards. There are tons of these in lappys now so..Pretty please :)
Lifted - Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - link
Seconded.Blacklash - Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - link
Just grab ATiTool from Techpowerup! and reduce the clocks of the XT.Interesting article, and as someone said you have a chart with text referring to AMD above it and the actual CPU numbers labelled as Intel. The last four charts on the clock for clock page say AMD yet list Intel CPUs.
dvinnen - Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - link
Last time I checked, ATiTool dosen't support the HD 2900xt. Only one that I know of is a buggy peice of software from AMD to change clock speeds.NullSubroutine - Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - link
Ati Tools works with 2900, I use it for my overclocking/fan contol.Ati Tray Tols does not work with the 2900. They are two different programs, Ati Tools is mainly for the things I use them for, while Tray Tools is a replacement for Catalyst Control Center.
Bjoern77 - Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - link
why bench the 2900 pro? is there a 2900pro which can't be clocked back to xt level? :)I'm glad i got a 2900pro for myself, regarding this benches i get 95% performance of a 8800gtx for 50% of it's price.