Looking Back Pt. 3: The 6800 Ultra, ForceWare, and the Future

The Wildcard: Console Ports

One area of increasing importance lately in gaming is the relationship between PC games and consoles games. Once greatly separated in abilities and game types, the PC and the console have been coming together in recent years with a number of titles being published for both the PC and one or more consoles. Since this influences game design towards a different direction than PC-centric design, we've rounded up 4 games from our usual test sequence that are all console ports, to see if these console influences offer anything substantially different from the normal ebb & flow of game performance.

Because these games aren't designed with the PC as the primary platform, benchmarking these games is a more limited and difficult affair than our other games. As such, we are only going to list the performance of the initial working driver and the latest driver for each game.

Serious Sam 2

First off is Serious Sam 2, Croteam's sequel to their immensely popular run and gun FPS. Unlike its predecessor which was first a PC game and then poorly ported to a console, this title was simultaneously developed for both the Xbox and the PC, which means it shows some of those aforementioned console influences.

Serious Sam 2
1024x768	0xAA	4xAA
ForceWare 78.01	82.2	56.9
ForceWare 84.21	83.7	58
Catalyst 5.09	56.3	23.3
Catalyst 6.04	72.7	41

Like most games designed with a console in mind, Serious Sam 2 while still a graphically impressive title is not terribly hard on our GPUs. However, looking at the ATI results, the performance improvement is very eye-catching, though it also highlights the initial disappointing performance. With NVIDIA providing the underpinnings of the original Xbox, it's hard to tell if this is a case where they have a natural advantage or if ATI simply was unlucky with the game initially, but at any rate it reinforces the importance of the impact of new drivers on freshly-released games.

The Chronicles of Riddick

Here is another game with roots originally in a console game, and in fact it was originally only a console game. However, with the PC version released some 6 months after the Xbox version, the Developers Cut offers enough differences from other titles that were simultaneously developed that it can stand apart.

The Chronicles of Riddick
1280x1024	0xAA	4xAA
ForceWare 66.93	36.83	21.26
ForceWare 84.21	37.6	21.5
Catalyst 4.11	20.11	9.11
Catalyst 6.04	23.22	10.88

In spite of the time difference between releases and the more PC-focused nature of the resulting game, we see an interesting pattern similar to what happened in Serious Sam 2. NVIDIA picks up nothing, while ATI picks up over 10% in order to partially close a fairly wide gap. This could be another case where performance favors NVIDIA due to the Xbox, in which case NVIDIA may be in for a rude awakening in the near future as more Xbox360 titles make the transition to the PC. (Xbox360 uses an ATI graphics chip, whereas the original Xbox used an NVIDIA graphics chip.) Of course, with PS3 also using NVIDIA hardware, it could be that Xbox360 ports will run better on ATI while PS3 ports will run better on NVIDIA; that's something we'll watch for over the coming year(s).

Need For Speed: Underground 2

Moving away from Xbox-only titles, Need For Speed: Underground 2 differs in that it was created for multiple consoles instead of being an Xbox exclusive. With a focus on vehicular mayhem, NFS offers a nice contrast to our other games. Here, a super high frame rate isn't quite as important as in FPS games, since fast changes in direction aren't quite as frequent. It will also be interesting to see how a "sim" compares to the more common FPS benchmarks.

Need For Speed: Underground 2
1024x768	0xAA	4xAA
ForceWare 66.93	62	49
ForceWare 84.21	62	49
Catalyst 4.11	58	38
Catalyst 6.04	59	39

As the only multi-platform console port on our list of games, it's very notable that NVIDIA does not have a massive performance lead at any point here, nor does ATI need to close any large gaps. While the framerate hovers around 60 FPS, the title is not locked at 60hz internally, and rather this is only an odd coincidence. Although the lack of a performance increase is a bit disappointing, the implications of the data aren't. As PC games become increasingly tied to console games, who's under the hood of the primary console may be having a fairly large impact when it comes to PC performance.

Final Fantasy XI

Rounding up our look at console games, we take a look at Square-Enix's MMORPG, originally released for the Playstation 2. With an emphasis on the number of characters in a scene over individual character detail and environmental detail, FFXI can be fairly punishing even with it's now dated graphics.

Final Fantasy XI
1024x768	0xAA
ForceWare 60.72	6472
ForceWare 84.21	6562
Catalyst 4.05	6336
Catalyst 6.04	6212

As neither ATI nor NVIDIA supply the graphics underpinnings of the PS2, it's not surprising to see both start out on equal footing. In fact, neither card deviates much from their initial score, indicating that the limiting factor is not the GPU in the first place, and hence there's little that either company can do to improve performance. However as ATI and NVIDIA will be supplying the GPUs in all 3 next-generation consoles, these scenarios are likely to be few and far between in the near future.