Workstation Power: ATi's FireGL X1 under Linux

Quake 3 Arena And Parsec

The gaming section of our benchmarks consists of Quake 3 Arena (version 1.31) and the space shooter (www.parsec.org ). In both games, a demo scenario runs in 24-bit color in each resolution and without FSAA. In Quake, the timedemo can be started from the console, which can be reached by pressing [Shift]+[`]. Then enter "timedemo 0" and "demo_four.dm," and the demo starts. When it finishes, simply go back to the console again with [Shift]+[`] to check the resulting framerate.

The procedure is almost identical for Parsec: go to the console with [Shift]+[`], type "timedemo 0" and "testdemo 1," let the demo run, and finally, check the console again for the result.

Parsec demo

Through The Blender

As our representative for rendering and modeling programs, we chose the Blender benchmark, or "blenchmark" for short. Its results are a good indication of a card's 3D performance in professional 3D rendering. Blenchmark is started from the command line by entering "blender -p 100 100 900 700 blacksmith.blend" (vBlender 2.23). Press [Control]+[Alt]+[t] for the menu, then click "draw" to receive the results for a wireframe rendering of the model (draw). [Control]+[Alt]+[z] will fill in the areas of the blacksmith model, and clicking on "draw" once more gives you the second result, this time for draw+z.

You can download the 3D model blacksmith.blend at ftp.stenstad.net/mirrors/ftp.blender.nl/demos/blacksmith.tgz , among other places. However, this particular model is making its last appearance in our testing suite here. Due to the performance of current graphics chips, the results are too close together to actually be a good (read: meaningful) criterion by which to measure performance.

Blender Benchmark Blacksmith