UT 2003 without a Radeon 9700?

[rogue1979]

I have heard many people saying UT 2003 is hell on any video card but a Radeon 9700. Just for the record I have a Geforce3 Ti200 @255/530 that plays smoothly at 1280x 1024 x 32 with 16-tap anisotropic filtering. This is with AA disabled, but it still looks great. I have three Radeon 9000's systems that handle it smoothly at 1024 x 768 x 32 16-tap. In my humble opinion, first person shooter games don't show the jaggies nearly as bad as racing games or flight simulators.
However, is someone has a spare 9700 they wanna give my so I can compare how good it looks with higher resolutions and AA turned on, feel free to do so

 

[ctk1981]

I think peoples definition of playable is changing after the 9700 Pro and eventually the GeForce5.

I can run UT2003 on my GeForce3 Ti500 (dual processor setup kills the perf) at 1024x768 and some eyecandy turned on. Levels set at normal or such.

However on my 9700 I run 1280x1024x32 with 4X AA and 8X Anistropic filtering with all details cranked up to the highest setting. So which has become playable for me? Easy, the 9700 Pro for me! For the record, I never used to play any games past 1024x768, never used AA, never used AF either. Quite a change since I went to the 9700 Pro and P4 setup.

At 1280x1024 I dont think there are too many jaggies like you said already, but at 1024x768 its quite noticable. Before I would have never noticed!

 

[DT4K]

It all depends on what you are comparing to. I played the demo on my GF3 Ti200 and it played fine at 10x7 with medium details. But I'm sure if I saw it running on a 9700 with all the goodies, it would make my Ti200 look crappy.

I used to play Quake 2 on a K6-2 380 with 4MB onboard video and software rendering. I got about 20-30 fps at 640 x 480.
When I put a Voodoo 3 in there, and was able to run with OpenGL hardware acceleration and get around 50 fps at 1024 x 768, I was thrilled.
I thought Quake 2 looked amazing.

I still remember when modems jumped from 28 to 56k. We thought that was really fast.

So it all depends on your perspective and what you have gotten used to.
2 years ago, the GF2 was a kick-a@$ card.
2 years from now, people will consider the 9700 to be an old crappy card.

 

[Brian48]

My backup system still runs with a GeForce3. At 1024x768 with MAX settings, performance is still pretty good with UT2003. Especially with the new drivers in the v40.xx series. Very smooth with very few hitches. No complaints from me.

 

[fluxquantum]

i am playing ut2003 on a gainward geforce 3 ti-200 128 MB at 1280x1024 and it runs smooth. i am overclocking both my processor and video card. i guess that helps quite a bit.

 

[AnAndAustin]

It is def down to pers pref. GF3, Rad8500 and GF4TI are all very capable of running UT2003 and nice as well. Of course it is ideal to use a top CPU with a Rad9700 and have all details maxed out with full eye candy, but obviously not all of us have the money or even if we had would use it in the same way. Some people demand 100FPS+ while others are happy with 30FPS, obviouslt the majority of us are about 60FPS. Again some people really notice the jaggies even in high res, or the lack of AF for that matter. Another point is the CPU used, there's no real need to have a P4 2.8ghz with a GF2, GF3 or Rad9000 and similarly no point having a Celeron 500mhz with a Rad9700. If you have a decently fast CPU and a decently fast gfx card you should find UT2003 very playable, even some of the lesser setups should run it happily in 800x600x32 which a couple of years ago was a pretty nice res LOL!

AnAndTech's UT2003 GPU shootout inc CPU Scaling (high detail is maxed out sliders!) and all cards at stock

800x600x32 & XP2000+: GF4TI4200=195FPS GF4MX440=105FPS GF3TI200=140FPS GF2TI=80FPS Rad8500=140FPS
800x600x32 & 1.2ghz: GF4TI4200=175 GF4MX440=103 GF3TI200=135 GF2TI=80 Rad8500=135

AnAndTech's Rad9000PRO review, UT2003 part showing diff res with many gfx cards