Publisher Web Site: www.idsoftware.com
Quake3 Web Site: www.quake3arena.com
Cost: $0 to $40.00
Who can forget the old standby, Quake3? Let's be honest... how many video card reviews do you read that don't include Quake3 scores? Precious few, I'd wager. Yes, we know all the arguments about it favoring Intel CPU's (many say the same about 3DMark2001, of course), but given how many review sites (including Sharky Extreme) use Quake3 as a standard benchmark, you'll likely want to be comparing apples to apples.
The required cost of the software needed to do this benchmark is once again... nothing. As with 3DMark2001, a free version is available, the demo of Quake3 Arena that has all the functionality you need to get a score out of your video card that you can compare to the ones that reviewers list. And for those of you who will wince at the 46+ meg download, once again, the cost of buying the game is under $50, so it's not going to break the bank But for those who do have access to higher-speed internet connections, or an amazing supply of patience, the demo will not only do everything you need for this purpose; it will also come in handy even for those who own the full game. This is because that full version you have will likely be regularly updated by point updates that will render the default timedemo tests unusable.
Using the software to test is not quite intuitive, but it is pretty easy. First, you'll want to know what resolutions to test at. Standard settings of 'High Quality,' 'Normal,' 'Fast,' and 'Fastest' are selectable in the graphics settings of the game. Using these as starting points (High Quality and Normal are the most commonly found), then change just the resolution to commonly tested ones of 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1200. And at each of these settings and resolutions, use the following commands to run the timedemos:
- At the main game menu, press the tilde key (~) to call up the console. Then, in order, type the following commands, hitting enter after each line:
- /disconnect
- /timedemo 1
- /demo demo001
Using these same commands, you can (and should) make use of the timedemo and demo variables to replace "/timedemo 1" with "/timedemo 2" and/or "/demo demo001" with "/demo demo002." You should once again note, however, that updating to new point releases will render demo001 and demo002 unusable; but should be able to find new demos that will work with updated versions, and can only have multiple installs. Besides... as was said in the section on 3DMark2001, benchmarking is always best on a clean system.
Publisher Web Site: www.interplay.com
MDK2 Web Site: www.interplay.com/mdk2/index.html
Cost: $0 to $20
MDK2's function makes things about as easy as they're going to get for you, as the startup screen you'll see when you start the game will not only let you set the resolution, depth, and display settings however you like, but will let you click on the "Test Settings" button to have it go through a test that will report how many frames per second your system can handle at the current settings. There really is not much more to say about that other than that you should try to emulate reviewers' settings exactly to compare your scores to theirs.
