Unreal Tournament 2003 is the new king of the hill when it comes to online FPS games, and quite rightly so. It's a great looking and fun title, as well as being a very stressful test on your graphics card. DirectX 8 technology makes this more of a test than the titles used thus far. We recorded a custom time demo and recorded the average frame rate on each card.
As you can see, the Radeon 9800 cards are more adept at coping with UT2k3 than the nVIDIA cards, with the FX5900 only being a single fps quicker than the 9700 Pro in this particular demo. In flyby tests the FX cards were a lot more competitive with the ATi cards, as the lack of weapons effects makes quite a difference on the shader usage of this title.
My favourite game at the moment, Halo, is a staggeringly beautiful game utilising DirectX 9 technology. Everything from the enemies to the sky and water effects are sublimely pulled off.
There is a quite significant difference between the XT and the 9700 Pro on our first Direct X 9 title. You can see that in this game there is definately a real-world reason to upgrade to an XT even if you have an already powerful 9700 Pro card. The XT is some 25% faster than the FX5950 in this busy benchmark. What should be said is that in less intensive parts of the game, ie open ground, the FX cards are far more competative. All five cards tested dipped well below the comfortable 30fps required for smooth gameplay in this benchmark, but overall you definately want Radeon stamped on your box to get the most out of Microsoft's masterpiece.
Max Payne features quite simply the most realistic faces and characters of any game I have seen released so far, sublimely crafted, its a big departure from the ever-constipated look on the face of Max in his first outing. This is actually a Direct X 8.1 title, but even so it really flexes the muscles of the cards on test.
In this benchmark the ATi cards are significantly faster than the FX59xx cards. Users upgrading from a 9700 to the GeFrorce FX59xx cards will be thoroughly dissapointed with the performance in this title, as even the previous generation is some 11% faster than nVIDIA's latest card.
F1 Challenge 99-02 is a superb racing game from EA, it has wonderful graphics, and unlike Geoff Crammond's latest travesty, excellent handling and physics. Its a shame EA have not got the 2003 season licence (a Sony exclusive) but Ralph Hummerich & Ivo Franic have already released a full season extra pack with 2003's cars, tracks and drivers which you can download free here.
If you are a Michael Schumacher wannabe, then you will definately want a 9800 XT card. On busy circuits like Monaco and Australia, the 25% extra performance will certianly come in handy. Note that the flagship FX5950 is only a match for the 9700 Pro in this game.
Tomb Raider: Angel of darkness is a somewhat unspectacular continuation of the Lara Croft series of games. It doesn't really bring anything new to the genre, but it does feature a few DX9 effects.
As you can see the familar pattern continues here, with the 9800XT being the quickest card on test. This time its lead over the nVIDIA chasers is around 13%, the new detonators really helped the 5950 in this test.
