GLEXCESS is an excellent openGL benchmark written by our friend. Paolo Martella and is the best way to test a wide range of openGL effects across a number of cards.

1024x768

1280x960

1600x1200

(click all for larger size)

The most astounding things about the GL Excess benchmark results is that no matter what test was performed, even at 1600x1200 4xAA and 16xAF the card maintained exceptionally high framerates. The lowest fps experienced was 49fps during scene 4 however this was only for a couple of seconds and in that test the card averaged 66fps. Looking to the performance hit of applying 4xAA and 16xAF in this application we see that at 1024x768 the difference is only 24%. At 1280x960 this lowers to 23% and finally at 1600x1200 it is again 24%. When using 4xAA and 16xAF the card is processing a much larger volume of data and to only loose 24% of performance a staggering result.

 

Codecult, a Phenomedia Group company, announced the release of a new 3D graphics benchmark based on their CodeCreatures 3D engine. The game development system was recently presented at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California. Broad acception among reknown developers has sparked Codecult to release this benchmark.

The Codecreatures benchmark is written with Microsoft's DirectX 8.1 API and incorporates the use of Vertex and PixelShaders popular on next generation 3D accelerators. The benchmark plays a photo-realistic nature scene and calculates the performance of the graphics adapter by measuring the fps that it can display at 1024x768, 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 resolutions. The score is a geometric mean of those three resolutions called the Codecreatures number.

At standard settings (1024x768 and no AA or AF) the 9800 pro shows the following results. To give you an idea of relative performance an FX 5600 scores around 25fps with a Radeon 9700 scoring in the high 30’s. (1024x768 0xAA 0xAF)

1024x768 0xAA 0xAF

1024x768 2xAA 8xAF

1280x960 2xAA 8xAF

1280x960 4xAA 16xAF

1600x1200 0xAA 0xAF

1600x1200 4xAA 16xAF

The CodeCreatures results show us again that the 9800 pro is a great performer at high resolutions. To achieve an average speed of 28fps at a resolution as high as 1600x1200 is something many would have though impossible 12 months ago and should this engine be used in any games 28fps would be a playable speed.

Next: Benchmarking in Unreal Tournament 2003