These benchmarks are meant to aid in answering the one hardware question that comes into the Blue Tower more than any other: "What is the best video card for Quake and Quake II?" | Related
Link The Quake Benchmarks Site |
Quake/Quake II Benchmarks
Coming Soon:
Benchmarks on the a PIII-500, the Vooodoo Banshee and yup, the Voodoo3.
What's New:
February 18
Fixed a couple of numbers that were inavertantly swaaped (the results for the crusher and massive1 demos on the Viper at 640x480). Sorry about the error.
Past Results:
August 15, 1998 - August 12, 1998. Both include STB VELOCITY 4400 Benchmarks without the BIOS update to lower the board's clock speed.
Current Results:
PII-400
Quake II | ||||||
Matrox | TNT | Voodoo2 | ||||
demo1 | G200 | SPECTRA | VELOCITY | VIPER | Single |
SLI |
640x480 | 38.1 | 72.1 | 70.5 | 69.1 | 85.2 | 92.5 |
800x600 | 25.9 | 57.5 | 58.0 | 58.9 | 59.8 | 89.5 |
1024x768 | 16.5 | 36.7 | 37.3 | 38.6 | -- | 70.1 |
massive1 | G200 | SPECTRA | VELOCITY | VIPER | Single |
SLI |
640x480 | 29.2 | 56.0 | 54.0 | 56.3 | 64.5 | 66.6 |
800x600 | 22.7 | 49.6 | 49.0 | 49.4 | 49.7 | 65.9 |
1024x768 | 15.4 | 35.1 | 35.5 | 36.5 | -- | 57.9 |
crusher | G200 | SPECTRA | VELOCITY | VIPER | Single |
SLI |
640x480 | 24.6 | 36.4 | 35.3 | 35.9 | 41.2 | 41.4 |
800x600 | 20.2 | 35.7 | 34.6 | 34.5 | 35.1 | 41.4 |
1024x768 | 14.1 | 29.5 | 29.5 | 30.1 | -- | 39.7 |
PII-400
Quake | ||||||
Matrox | TNT | Voodoo2 | ||||
demo1 | G200 | SPECTRA | VELOCITY | VIPER | Single |
SLI |
640x480 | 54.8 | 105.9 | 106.2 | 108.4 | 111.8 | 172.8 |
800x600 | 36.7 | 72.8 | 73.5 | 74.9 | 73.7 | 130.0 |
1024x768 | 22.4 | 46.3 | 46.5 | 47.8 | -- | 84.8 |
demo2 | G200 | SPECTRA | VELOCITY | VIPER | Single |
SLI |
640x480 | 53.3 | 104.0 | 104.8 | 106.5 | 108.0 | 174.0 |
800x600 | 35.3 | 70.6 | 71.5 | 72.7 | 71.2 | 127.8 |
1024x768 | 21.2 | 44.5 | 44.9 | 46.2 | -- | 82.4 |
bigass1 | G200 | SPECTRA | VELOCITY | VIPER | Single |
SLI |
640x480 | 45.8 | 67.3 | 69.0 | 68.3 | 90.4 | 102.8 |
800x600 | 32.8 | 58.5 | 60.6 | 59.9 | 62.4 | 97.2 |
1024x768 | 20.5 | 40.7 | 41.6 | 42.1 | -- | 73.9 |
QuakeWorld | ||||||
Matrox | TNT | Voodoo2 | ||||
overkill | G200 | SPECTRA | VELOCITY | VIPER | Single |
SLI |
640x480 | 38.8 | TBD | TBD | 48.6 | 60.1 | 60.3 |
800x600 | 30.2 | TBD | TBD | 48.4 | 49.7 | 60.2 |
1024x768 | 18.4 | TBD | TBD | 39.0 | -- | 57.6 |
Test Machine: PII-400, 256 MB RAM, PCI audio, V-Sync Off, 16-bit textures off. Windows 98.
PII-233
Quake II | ||||||
Matrox | TNT | Voodoo2 | ||||
demo1 | G200 | SPECTRA | VELOCITY | VIPER | Single |
SLI |
640x480 | 27.8 | 42.5 | 41.6 | 41.6 | 54.2 | 54.5 |
800x600 | 21.0 | 41.4 | 40.6 | 40.8 | 50.5 | 54.5 |
1024x768 | 15.9 | 35.3 | 35.3 | 35.6 | -- | 53.2 |
massive1 | G200 | SPECTRA | VELOCITY | VIPER | Single |
SLI |
640x480 | 18.4 | 32.7 | 31.4 | 31.5 | 39.2 | 39.2 |
800x600 | 16.2 | 32.5 | 31.2 | 31.4 | 37.8 | 39.2 |
1024x768 | 12.4 | 32.0 | 29.2 | 29.5 | -- | 38.9 |
crusher | G200 | SPECTRA | VELOCITY | VIPER | Single |
SLI |
640x480 | 13.2 | 20.5 | 20.3 | 20.3 | 24.6 | 24.6 |
800x600 | 13.2 | 20.5 | 20.3 | 20.3 | 24.4 | 24.6 |
1024x768 | 11.6 | 20.2 | 19.9 | 20.0 | -- | 24.6 |
PII-233
Quake | ||||||
Matrox | TNT | Voodoo2 | ||||
demo1 | G200 | SPECTRA | VELOCITY | VIPER | Single |
SLI |
640x480 | 51.5 | 78.4 | 76.9 | 79.5 | 101.2 | 112.0 |
800x600 | 36.3 | 68.6 | 68.4 | 69.8 | 72.4 | 107.1 |
1024x768 | 22.1 | 46.2 | 46.5 | 47.8 | -- | 82.2 |
demo2 | G200 | SPECTRA | VELOCITY | VIPER | Single |
SLI |
640x480 | 52.3 | 81.8 | 80.3 | 81.9 | 101.7 | 116.8 |
800x600 | 35.3 | 68.3 | 68.2 | 69.5 | 71.0 | 110.7 |
1024x768 | 21.2 | 44.5 | 44.9 | 45.9 | -- | 81.7 |
bigass1 | G200 | SPECTRA | VELOCITY | VIPER | Single |
SLI |
640x480 | 32.0 | 40.5 | 41.3 | 41.0 | 60.0 | 60.6 |
800x600 | 28.5 | 40.0 | 40.7 | 40.5 | 54.1 | 60.3 |
1024x768 | 19.8 | 35.8 | 37.0 | 36.3 | -- | 58.0 |
QuakeWorld | ||||||
Matrox | TNT | Voodoo2 | ||||
overkill | G200 | SPECTRA | VELOCITY | VIPER | Single |
SLI |
640x480 | 23.1 | TBD | TBD | 28.3 | 35.0 | 35.0 |
800x600 | 23.0 | TBD | TBD | 28.2 | 35.0 | 35.0 |
1024x768 | 18.1 | TBD | TBD | 28.1 | -- | 34.9 |
Same as above, clocked down to 233 MHz
The Boards
The Canopus SPECTRA 2500 is a 16 MB AGP RIVA TNT-based board.
The STB VELOCITY 4400 is also a 16 MB AGP RIVA TNT-based board.
The STB Black Magic is a 12 MB PCI Voodoo2-based board (used to represent a typical Voodoo2 reference board).
The Matrox Mystique G200 is a 16 MB AGP G200-based board.
The Drivers
The SPECTRA was tested using version 4.10.01.0032-1.01.04 drivers from Canopus. The drivers are a late beta, but were stable and almost glitch-free, with the only bug I noticed to be a tendency to garble the images in the upper-left corner of Win98 "My Computer" windows.
The VELOCITY was tested using version 1.31 drivers from STB, described as final shipping drivers. While the drivers seem perfectly stable, I noticed couple of visual glitches, including a garbled Windows opening screen, and an odd inverse coloring around the status markers in Eudora (fixed in more recent driver revs.).
The Voodoo2 boards used in the comparison are two 12 MB STB Black Magic cards using the latest version 4.10.01.0180-2.17 reference drivers from 3Dfx.
The Mystique G200 was tested with version 4.10.01.4240 drivers from Matrox.
No performance tweaks whatsoever are used for these benchmarks.
Notes
Strong efforts have been made to ensure that these are reliable numbers, including running each demo three times (Quake, in particular has the habit of throwing in an odd low timedemo score). The demo1 and demo2 scores for Quake are included to correlate with both 3D GameGauge scores and conventional benchmarks (which often use demo2). the bigass, massive1, crusher, and overkill scores all use demos available from 3 Fingers' Benchmarks page designed to represent heavy-duty multiplayer play.