Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/2988

Adding some new games

by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 3, 2003 11:20 AM EST


As promised, we've been working on adding some new games to the benchmark suite for Part II. We're adding around 5 new games to the suite bringing us up to a total of 20 games, but we're still working on putting together the benchmarks so I'll let you know when we have a final tally of the number of games you'll see in Part II.

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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