Inno3D GeForce 7950 GT iChiLL G5G3C

Quake 4

Publisher: Activision

We used the full retail version of Quake 4 patched to version 1.3.0. It is the fourth game in the Quake series, based on the technically sound Doom 3 engine. However, unlike Doom 3, we found that the game benefits from at least 2x anti-aliasing, and the experience with anti-aliasing at a slightly lower resolution was better than increasing the resolution with no AA applied.

Both anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering were controlled from inside the game. When you select "High Quality" mode, 4xAF is automatically enabled, and when the "Ultra Quality" mode is enabled, 8xAF is automatically applied to the scene.

We used a custom-recorded demo from a section that represents fairly typical performance throughout the rest of the game. We set the in-game details to high quality and left Vsync disabled. Both anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering were controlled inside the game using console commands. Anti-aliasing was adjusted using the "r_multisamples" cvar, while anisotropic filtering values were set using "image_anisotropy".


It will come as no surprise that the 7950 GT rips through Quake 4 without ever really breaking a sweat, even at 1920x1200 4xAA this card will give you an average of over 60fps.

Equally unsurprising is how much the PowerColor falls behind the 7950 GT, as ATI cards have for a long time had relatively poor OpenGL performance. Of course, the difference is somewhat academic as both cards will give you decent performance all the way up to 1920x1200 4xAA.