Now I've got a question for you all; one of the requests I've seen was for us to include Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness in our benchmarking suite. Controversy aside, I'd like to know if you all are actually concerned with the performance of TRAOD or if it is more of a "hey the game says it's DX9 and there's controversy surrounding the benchmark" kind of thing. Personally, I think the game looks like a DX7 title (even using PS2.0 shaders) and the only place that has given it a good review is Maxim Magazine (go figure). With this new benchmarking suite I wanted to focus on games that people actually played or care about (Aquamark3 is the exception), and I'd rather include another game that people are going to play if TRAOD isn't something you have installed on your system.
So let me know; I want honest opinions here, do you own the game? Do you care about how it runs? Should we include it (and why)? We already own a copy of the game (given to us by NVIDIA actually, there's one for the conspiracy theorists) so running the benchmark is no big deal. It's an issue of time more than anything else, if you guys would like to see it we'll include it but if you think something else is more important we'll do that.
We want to include FIFA in our benchmarking suite but we're going to wait for the new version of the game to be released (due out at the end of this month I beleive). The new version of FIFA will be based on EA's Eagle engine which is a DX9 engine, so we figure it makes sense to wait for that.
Derek is working on benchmarking Tron 2 as well as some other new titles we have, while I snagged a Radeon 9800 Pro and a GeForce FX 5900 Ultra from the lab last night to play around with at the house. I'll be focusing on gameplay experience with the two cards/drivers and will be looking for any visual artifacts or other random issues during gameplay. We're working hard at this and we are shooting for a quick turnaround on Part II (hopefully very early next week if I can have my way), but I'll keep you posted.
After I hand Part II off to Derek completely I'm going to begin work on the new version of Windows XP Media Center Edition. If there's anything you'd like to see/know about for inclusion in this forthcoming review, let me know.
For now it's time to heat up some leftovers for lunch (made nacho cheese turkey burgers and hushpuppies last night, or I could heat up the enchiladas from two nights ago...hmm...decisions). Enjoy your Friday and have a great weekend, I'll be around here all weekend working so you'll definitely hear from me.
Take care.
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Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
#28try a to read some REAL reviews for a start!
http://www.nordichardware.com/reviews/graphiccard/...
BF1942!!!!!! ye right....its not going to happend for anand....it obvious why!!!!
Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
#28try a to read some REAL reviews for a start!
http://www.nordichardware.com/reviews/graphiccard/...
BF1942!!!!!! ye right....its not going to happend for anand....it obvious why!!!!
Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
Wow, I didn't know the ATI trolls were out in full force today, as can be seen by the moron comment from #25.Anyway Anand, keep up the good work. And no, TR: AOD just plain sucks. Just because it's a DX9 game doesn't mean you should waste your time. People recommending it don't understand that it's not going to be a very heavily played game and therefore not really useful.
Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
Now ... why Anand don't want to include TR:AoD ????????????????????????????????????I know .....HE don't want to make Nvidia look bad!!!!!
Anand= Nvidia's bitch
How pathetic
x_fiddle - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
I believe I agree with the majority out there in saying that unless there is something inherently wrong with the way TR:AOD, it should still be included in benchmarking. Even though it may not look "pretty" it is still one of the few DX9 games out there and it a test of the DX9 feature set.As far as popular games are concerned I think that as others have suggested BF1942 should deffinitely be included.
Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
Now ... why Anand don't want to include TR:AoD ????????????????????????????????????I know .....HE don't want to make Nvidia look bad!!!!!
Anand= Nvidia's bitch
How pathetic
Adul Tangtam - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=...had to do it boss ;)
Adul Tangtam - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=...had to do it boss ;)
Morten - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
#16 I agree that it -can- be a bit misleading to post benchmarks on unreleased hardware. But, seeing as the hardware is just clocked higher, no actual architectural differences/improvements, I see no harm in this. The only thing of relevance in that article that was missing, was IQ. Which is coming in part 2. If your a hardware enthusiast like myself, I would think that you would enjoy getting these benchmarks. All they did, was prove that nVidia's next refresh won't be anything special. Just like ATI's. It'll be an improvement over the 5900Ultra. Like the TX is over the Pro. Nothing special. Anyway, a preview is a preview. If you don't know the difference between a review and preview, just ignore those results that are based on preview hardware from now on. It's not so hard. And if some readers get burnt on this, and thinks it's actual hardware, too bad for them. They should learn to READ. I really don't see a problem with this. Not in this case anyway.josedawg - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
I think you should include BF1942. It's a very popular game nowadays. Also try the BF1942 addons Road to Rome, and Desert Combat (I hear Desert Combat is much more demanding on the GPU than the original BF1942 and Road to Rome, but I haven't played it personally so I can't make a positive conclusion)