1. Foreword. The First Impression.
2. Cooling System. Basic Components.
3. Design Quality Evaluation.
4. Setting Up and Overclocking.
5. Synthetical Tests (3DMark 2001SE and 2005).
6. Direct3D Games (Far Cry, Serious Sam 2).
7. OpenGL Games (Quake 4, Prey).
8. Advanced Anti-Aliasing.
9. Conclusions.

Quake 4 and Prey have been chosen for our OpenGL benchmarking. Once again, they're popular titles, both provide with documented capabilities to capture and play back demo records, and capable of displaying both average and minimal FPS. Both of them are based upon the Doom 3 engine by id Software, and there is no way to run these ones under Direct3D. This engine supports SM3.0 which is activated automatically for all cards tested.
 

Quake 4
(click to enlarge, 84Kb and 95Kb respectively)

There is no demo record on the Net to illustrate the best features of Quake 4 (it hasn't been found at least), so the author has decided to record one of his own, and here it is. The action takes place in Stroggs' air defence trenches. There are many lighting sources, high-detailed explosions and other interesting things to see. The whole 64.6Mb demo record may be downloaded by following this ed2k link. All effects have been enabled in the game (Shadows, Specular, Bump Maps and so on). Very High texture quality has been chosen because Ultra High is recommended for video cards with 512Mb of video memory installed, and none of the cards tested has got that much.
 
What to say, this demo record appears to be processor-hungry very much. Nothing comes from nothing, so it must be not an easy task to calculate this beautiful physics in real-time. Anyway, Sapphire Radeon X1600 Pro has shown what it's good for once again — it has been unable to reach those 47-49 average FPS and 37-39 minimal FPS even in the easiest mode. Furthermore, it has been unable even to pass over the mark of 30 average FPS in this mode, what means a complete disaster. At the same time, BFG GeForce 7800GS OC has stumbled over the hardest mode only, though the overclocking helped a little. Even ASUS GeForce 6600GT Top has delivered playable performance in all modes without 4x multisampled anti-aliasing.
 

Prey
(click to enlarge, 125Kb and 78Kb respectively)

Although Prey and Quake 4 are based upon the same engine, this game is a well-done one with an interesting game-play. Like with Quake 4 above, the author has been up to record a demo of his own. The action takes place on the All Fall Down level, right when the hero is about to knock out with a monkey-wrench his first alien head-hunter. The scene features many high-detailed textures and special effects. Since the action takes place in a closed space, performance of the demo shouldn't be sensitive much to advanced anisotropic filtering. More on that, difference in quality between 16x anisotropic and trilinear filtering should be almost unnoticeable. This demo record of 8.66Mb may be downloaded by following this ed2k link. All game options have been set to the highest possible, all effects have been enabled as well.
 
BFG GeForce 7800GS OC feels just excellent with Prey. ASUS GeForce 6600GT Top isn't a bad performer too. Sapphire Radeon X1600 Pro has screwed up again by delivering unacceptable performance in all modes except of the easiest one. While BFG GeForce 7800GS OC and ASUS GeForce 6600GT Top have lost 8% maximum in performance with 16x anisotropic filtering enabled, Sapphire Radeon X1600 Pro has said good-bye to about 20%. Well, Serious Sam 2 has proved already that it can be even worse.