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Unreal Tournament 3 Performance Benchmarking

27/12/2008 Alcom's test machine is down! My media center PC, which is always on to record HD programming from a set top box, is temporarily out of commission. The BFG PSU I purchased in June to replace the last burnt out power supply has itself come to a smoking end. This one is still under warrantee though, so well see if I can't RMA the device quickly!

25/11/2008 Forceware 180.60 comes bearing Compute Unified Device Architecture, which is meaningless in the context of my Geforce 7 series cards. But since the 180.70 package is older than the 180.44's and wouldn't even install on my PC, I thought these were worth a shot.

20/11/2008 Forceware 180.48 touts WHQL status for newer cards and has been crowned the performance leader among 180.xx's!

15/11/2008 Forceware 180.44 by Dox's Custom Forceware was realeased at http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/. This includes a nifty installer and supports all cards, 6200 and up.

08/11/2008 Forceware 180.43 has topped its immediate predecessor by a decent margin. We aren't in the 174.xx neighbourhood, but it's nice to see some consistency return to the driver scene.

01/11/2008 Forceware 180.42 was released and run through my battery of batch tests. Read the results here.

24/10/2008 Forceware 178.24 slowly emerged after a period of driver doldrums. This set is destined for WHQL status but didn't break the performance bank by any means.

06/10/2008 Forceware 178.15 has finally come around, almost a week behind its Vista counterpart. This one is actually older than the 179.13 from last week, but I'll let the benchmarks tell the story.

01/10/2008 Forceware 179.13 popped up in mobile flavor from Alienware and was one tough cookie to install. Well, not really but I did have to import and mod some files from the 178.13 package to complete the install process. Read more

26/09/2008 The 178.xx Forceware series made it's debut with 178.13 WHQL. This one's hot and has renewed my hopes in nVidia's commitment to yesterday's architecture!

10/09/2008 Forceware 177.98 WHQL is the latest certified driver release from nVidia. This one gets the nod from me: decent performance and pain-free installation. Read my full analysis here.

30/08/2008 Forceware 177.92 has had it's day here at Alcom's Place. This was apparently a big release for PhysX support, although this driver supports all cards. Sadly, I just didn't see the numbers on my Geforce 7950 SLI rig.

19/08/2008 Forceware 177.89 is out at Guru3d for download and easy install (no .inf modding necessary.) Consider this a more official version of last week's 177.83 driver.

15/08/2008 Forceware 177.83, now that's what I'm talking about! Performance is up again after a lull of mediocre leaks. This one has the fewest hiccups among the entire 177.xx family of drivers!

12/08/2008 Forceware 177.79 was released and is apparently a candidate for WHQL certification. I wish nVidia would let me test these first: they aren't stellar!

30/07/2008 Forceware 177.73 has come out and tests reveal a slight increase in fps above 30.

27/07/2008 Forceware 177.70 has been run through my testing process and showed slightly better performance than 177.66 and fewer dips in fps.

13/07/2008 Forceware 177.66 is out! The leak came from XFastest and these are the latest drivers currently available. Read my analysis here.

06/07/2008 Forceware 177.41 was released amid eager expectations after the .35 sibling performed so well. Not so for this release: after my 9 runs, this driver gets a thumbs down for the Unreal Engine 3.

28/06/2008 Tournament Preparation Tips Team Dignitas players Gareth Marshall, AKA "GaRpy," and David Treacy, AKA "Zaccubus" of Razer's Team Dignitas, offer some inside training tips and preparation tactics for tournaments. Take a moment and check out this YouTube clip!

28/06/2008 Forceware 177.39 are a dreadful disappointment. Let's write this one off as a lesson learned and move on...

20/06/2008 Forceware 177.35 are finally here There are a few more out there, but a PSU failure and some additional nv4_disp.inf modding were stumbling blocks for me last week. Read More

30/05/2008 Forceware 175.80 get the nod from me! These are good quality drivers and should not be passed up. Read More

28/05/2008 I have improved the readability of my performance chart. Rather than all that data crammed into the page, I created a new Thickbox popup version of the Forceware Graph. Enjoy!

26/05/2008 Forceware 174.90 totally flew under my radar, but I spotted it and tested what might prove to be the last of the great 174.xx series drivers. I also came upon some interesting results along the way... Read about my findings here

24/05/2008 Forceware 175.75 is out with decent performance. Test results show these are among the best of the 175.xx series!

15/05/2008 Forceware 175.16 is now WHQL certified! I wish I could tell you this made it perform better than the last one, but my logs show it's on par with the last beta. What's more, I can't enable SLI for 175.70, so I'm skipping yet another recent beta.

11/05/2008 Forceware 175.16 is out and don't let the version number scare you: it is every bit as good as 175.63 and is an excellent alternative if the other fails you elsewhere.

07/05/2008 Forceware 175.63 has come out with what I initially interpreted as a disappointing showing. Boy, I was wrong! Read my analysis here. What's more, I've made an interesting discovery into the mystery of SLI modes and the "nVidia Recommended (SLI)" option. Read more.

05/05/2008 Forceware 175.51 are out. It feels like it's been a long time. Well, it has been: few drivers came out and the ones that did either wouldn't install, didn't support SLI or just plain sucked performance-wise.

13/04/2008 Forceware 174.82 are out. Yay. I've been having some issues with load times and driver sweeping, requiring some time debugging before I released my latest set of results.

29/03/2008 Forceware 174.74 was released by nVidia and set a new record on my charts!

22/03/2008 Forceware 174.60 and 174.70 was leaked on Xfastest and is the new chart-topper in my data log! Image quality is amazing to boot and as usual, I have no crash or SLI problems to report. Check it out!

19/03/2008 Forceware 174.40 and 174.53 beta drivers were released, the latter from nVidia itself. The 174.53 drivers are a WHQL candidate and both have proven their dominance in the Unreal Tournament 3 framerate race. I have updated both my dynamic table and the fusion chart: I hope you find my data useful!

12/03/2008 A new way to view results! I've published my data in an easy-to-read graphical chart format!

06/03/2008 Forceware 169.44 beta drivers released for the latest Crysis patch by EVGA!

04/03/2008 Forceware 174.31 and 174.20 beta drivers for XP 32 and Vista 32 leaked via Guru3d! The 174.xx drivers continue to improve!

17/02/2008 Forceware 174.16 beta drivers for XP 32/64 and Vista 32/64 leaked via Guru3d!

17/02/2008 Forceware 174.12 beta XP and Vista drivers leaked via ElectronicPunk! I also tweaked the summary table for readability so you can dynamically order the column data!

15/02/2008 Forceware 171.17 WHQL and 171.23 beta were leaked on station-drivers.com and have been added to the list!

13/02/2008 Forceware 169.39 WHQL appeared on ElectronicPunk.com via Guru3d Forums. Forceware 169.61, 169.38 and 171.16 beta (XP 32) drivers leaked!

Unreal Tournament 3 needs a monster computer to run in its full glory. I love it. To call me a die hard fan is a major understatement. It is my great pleasure to make sure you get the best possible frame rate from your system! I've been testing different drivers, configuration settings and SLI modes to take the guesswork out of tweaking. read more

Troubleshooting Tips

The Unreal community is up in arms over the touchiness of the Unreal Engine 3. People with computers once thought of as stable are now baffled by the cryptic message "ut3.exe has encountered an error". For those with UT3 crash issues, lag and stuttering, I have compiled a list of fixes: read more

Unreal Tournament 3 resources for the true fan. Check out the UT3 demo and patch download links, the official UT3 system requirements and troubleshoot your crash issues. Once you're in the game, get the most of if by tweaking your graphics performance by reading the results of real-world benchmarks.

Firewire Recording with Beyond TV 4

If you've upgraded to VLC 0.9.2 and your stream receiving string no longer works, be aware that there are some new syntax rules in effect. read more

Alcom's Place 2.1

Alcom's Place has had a minor reskin in honor of the widescreen gaming and media that we enjoy. Props to eMark Consulting and Design for the new CSS style sheet and XHTML 1.0 Strict update. Nice!