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Splinter Cell 3 - Chaos Theory

Sam Fisher returns for his third installment. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, the third game in the acclaimed Splinter Cell series, manages to improve the games visuals, make the gameplay a bit more nonlinear and adds some new gameplay modes to the already exhaustive Splinter Cell brand. Anyone who has seen Chaos Theory in action can attest to its visual masterpiece. Dynamic lighting is back in a big way. No longer are shadows blobby, elongated representations of the characters. Now we have shadows that are detailed and exact.
Another of the biggest renovations of the graphics is the amazing use of bump and normal mapping. Now when you are sulking around in the shadows of espionage Sam actually has a recognizable face, with expressions and features that look real. Rather than the flat textured faces we have seen in the games previous.

The game is so darn good.  

Splinter Cell 3 has been out for a while now and we recently recorded a timedemo. Finally we have a title that can utilize and stress a high-end graphics card.

Even after a year SplinterCell 3 (Chaos Theory) is rough on pretty much any videocard, that's why I love it so much; it's a near perfect game to stress graphics cards as it'll show off the delicate balance between core speed, memory and raw power of the graphics cards.

Here we can see that faster graphics cores matter for sure. No AA enabled in this game (not possible) so framebuffer is less of an issue... and that shows as the card can come along greatly up-to the highest resolutions.

3DMark 05 & 06 Business Edition

Literally millions and millions benchmark results have been submitted to Futuremarks Online ResultBrowser database. It has become a point of great prestige to be the holder of the highest 3DMark score. A compelling, easy-to-use interface has made 3DMark very popular among game enthusiasts. Futuremarks latest benchmark series, 3DMark03 up-to 3DMark06, continues this tradition by providing a Microsoft DirectX 9 benchmark.

The introduction of DirectX 9 and new hardware shader technologies puts a lot of power in the hands of game developers. Increasingly realistic 3D games will be available over the next year and a half. The use of 3D graphics will become more accessible to other applications areas and even operating systems.

Here we can see both the scores of 3DMark05 and 06.

Now you should be able to reach roughly 9000 points with a normal 320 MB model on 06 and roughly 15.000 with 3DMark05.

If you are wondering why the cards are faster then a 640 MB model, it's simple. We have no framebuffer limitation as the default test renders in 1024x768 for 3DMark 05 & 1280x1024 for 06. Now that fact combined with the faster clocked graphics cores on all 320 MB models inflicts the higher overall score.