Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Publisher: Activision

Built on an updated version of id Software's Doom 3 engine, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is a team-based first person shooter that recently obtained the title of being the first game to use John Carmack's megatexture technology: a single texture that spans the entire map.

ET:QW also makes use of many vehicles and large open areas which means the action in view can get really intensive in this team based shooter. It's also the only game in this suite that utilises OpenGL instead of the pretty much industry-standard DirectX API. We used the full retail version of the game patched to version 1.4.

We recorded a timenetdemo on the Valley level which lasts for several minutes during an online game - this used lots of the different graphical effects to create what we've deemed to be a fairly typical slice of action to stress the system. We also created a custom autoexec file that enabled ultra high video settings, over and above that of the standard in game "high", while soft particles was left disabled for the time being.






When 4xAA is enabled in Quake Wars, the GeForce 9800 GTX is disappointingly slower than its predecessor. And what's more, when AA is disabled at 2560x1600, you end up with three cards--the 9800 GTX, 8800 GTX and 8800 GTS 512--all performing very similarly. The 9800 GTX has a slight lead, but it's not enough to make any kind of difference to a gamer.