Unreal Tournament 3 Hardware Performance Guide
Unreal Tournament 3, based on Epic's Unreal Engine 3, has been in development for years. BioShock, Gears of War, and Mass Effect also use Unreal Engine 3 yet preceded Unreal Tournament 3's arrival by a few months, and almost a year in the case of Gears of War. The games may all use the same engine, but they have very different hardware requirements. Whereas BioShock requires powerful hardware to run, Unreal Tournament 3 doesn't leave anyone out of the fun. Mid-range CPUs and video cards from two years ago can run the game just fine, and with marvelous image quality. Of course, if you want more performance, higher resolutions, and antialiasing, more power is the way to go.
We tested Unreal Tournament 3 using the UT3Bench utility. The utility uses multiple demos, but we stuck with the Suspense flyby demo for all of our performance tests. The flyby takes a 60-second aerial tour of one of the larger vehicle-based multiplayer maps. All results are the average of three test runs.
Game Settings
Unreal Tournament 3 doesn't have too many settings, but what you do select makes a big difference on how the game performs and looks.
Graphics
The minimum specs for Unreal Tournament 3 call for a GeForce 6800, and it runs surprisingly well with one. We tested the game with more than 20 video cards, and checked to see how performance varied across three different operating systems: Windows XP, Windows Vista 32-bit, and Windows Vista 64-bit.
CPU
If you've got a CPU made in the past three years, you probably won't have too much trouble running Unreal Tournament 3. We tested out some of the more recent processors on the market to show you what an upgrade might do for you.
Memory
Unreal Tournament 3 requires 512MB of RAM, but you're definitely going to need more than that if you want to run the game at higher image-quality settings. We tested Unreal Tournament 3 with varying amounts of memory across Windows XP, Window Vista 32-bit, and Windows Vista 64-bit.
Systems
We built a few sample systems to show how the game performs using real-world computers put together with parts from past hardware generations. Our slowest machine, a 3.0GHz Pentium 4 paired with a GeForce 6800, didn't churn out a playable frame rate at 1600x1200 with maximum quality, but we got it humming along just fine after reducing the resolution and tweaking the quality settings. We also had to tone down the settings on our single-core AMD Athlon 64 4000+ and Radeon X1650 XTsystem to get it running smoothly. The dual-core Athlon 64 FX-60 and Radeon X1900 XT 256MB system ran the game with high-quality settings just fine. Our Intel Core 2 Duo setups also ran Unreal Tournament 3 at exceedingly high frame rates.
System-Level Performance Tests
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
1600x1200, Maximum Quality
Core 2 X6800, GeForce 8800 GTX 768, 2GB RAM, Vista - 124
Core 2 E6600, GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB, 2GB RAM, Vista - 106
Athlon 64 FX-60, Radeon X1900 XT 256MB, 2GB RAM, WinXP - 47
Athlon 64 4000+, Radeon X1650 XT 256MB, 2GB RAM, WinXP - 25
Pentium 4 3.0GHz, GeForce 6800 128MB, 1GB RAM, WinXP - 18
System Setup: Intel Core 2 X6800, Intel Core 2 E6600, Intel 975XBX2, 2GB Corsair XMS Memory (1GBx2), 160GB Seagate 7200.7 SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows Vista 32-bit. Graphics Card: GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB, XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB XXX Edition, beta Nvidia ForceWare 169.12.
Athlon 64 FX-60, Athlon 64 4000+, Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe, 2GB Corsair XMS Memory (1GBx2), 160GB Seagate 7200.7 SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows XP Professional SP2. Graphics Card: Radeon X1900 XT 256MB, Radeon X1650 XT 256MB, ATI Catalyst 7.11.
Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz, Asus P4C800, 1GB Corsair XMS Memory (512MBx2), 160GB Seagate 7200.7 SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows XP Professional SP2. Graphics Card: GeForce 6800 128MB, beta Nvidia ForceWare 169.09.
Labels: bioshock, Unreal Tournament 3, ut3