Fall 2003 Video Card Roundup Part I - ATI's Radeon 9800 XT
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on October 1, 2003 3:02 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The New Test Suite
As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, we are introducing a brand new test suite with this review and we are also kicking off the first installment of a multipart series covering multiple aspects of current (and somewhat next) generation gaming performance.
By no means should you take the limited (yet extensive) tests we have here as all you will see from us, but rather something to whet your appetite for what is yet to come. The focus of this review is plain and simple – comparing the basic performance of the latest offerings from ATI and NVIDIA. In the future installments we will cover image quality, CPU scaling and other aspects of performance in greater detail. We will be making notes of noticeable visual differences between ATI and NVIDIA in this article, but a comparison with supporting images will be done in Part II of the series.
As far as the new test suite is concerned, here are the benchmarks that made it in:
AquaMark 3
Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour
F1 Challenge ’99-‘02
Final Fantasy XI Benchmark 2
Halo
Homeworld 2
Jedi Knight III: Jedi Academy
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004
Neverwinter Nights: The Shadows of the Undrentide
Simcity 4
Splinter Cell
Unreal Tournament 2003
X2
Warcraft III: Frozen Throne
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
We are working on expanding the suite even further, but for now this is what we have. If you’d like to see more games added please feel free to let us know either by sending an email or even better, leaving a comment through the system at the bottom of the page.
We used ATI’s publicly available Catalyst 3.7 drivers and in order to support the NV38 we used NVIDIA’s forthcoming 52.14 drivers. The 52.14 drivers apparently have issues in two games, neither of which are featured in our test suite (Half Life 2 & Gunmetal).
Our test bed was configured as follows:
2.8GHz Intel Processor Prescott
512MB DDR400
Intel 875P Motherboard
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Jeff7181 - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
I think Anand is too worried about creating benchmarks that compare to benchmarks done by other review sites. Which is why they had "trouble" benchmarking certain games.I agree, Morrowind would be a good game to benchmark with... I've used it recently to show the differences of AA and AF along with FS2004.
I think what needs to be done in some games like Morrowind is just play the game for 15 minutes... then tell us what the minimum frame rate was, the average, and the high. Who cares if it's not replicated EXACTLY each time... after 15 minutes, the average along with the lows and highs should paint a pretty accurate picture.
Also, in my opinion, FS2004 is THE BEST software to use in comparing the differences between AA and AF between video cards. All you have to do is disable weather and ATC, and save a flight, then load the flight every time you want to take a screen shot. Also pressing Shift+Z twice puts your frame rates on the screen, so there's no need to use FRAPS.
Anonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
How about testing old games up to 2048x1536?Anonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
I suggest adding Tiger Woods 2004 to the suite. Turning up the eye candy is more demanding than one may think, so it would be a good test. But my main motivation is that there appear to be serious driver-related image quality issues with ATI (!) cards (e.g. water reflections).Anonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
What I would also like to see, is the test results from ATI and Nvidia against DCC packages, such as 3DStudioMax and Maya. I would like to know if these high end gaming cards can also handle some animation rendering too. Maybe they can't, but its one man's dream...Anonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
Good job.You should benchmark it with MORROWIND as well, or maybe under GOTHIC 2.
Anonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
And I have a voodoo2 and it sucks on Dx9, what's your point.?Anonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
Sony PS2 and X box Never have a graphics card issue (coz they purley game consoles idiot) yeah I know that, but also the game programers write the games for that particular game console.My question is why does Nvidia or Ati have to constantly adapt their drivers to PC games instead of the Games be compatible with the Graphics cards?
yours sincerly...
Noise
Anonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
I have ATI 9000 card and I can say that ATI sucks in OpenGL.
Anonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
#163, I believe that FarCry/64-bit/improved graphics is 100% marketing BS.Anonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
It's a good suite for testing, but one game that I'd really like to see is Far Cry performance on an Athlon 64...From what I've read the game will use the 64-bit architecture for something graphics-related, and it would be interesting to see how the graphics cards handle this.
If it can't be done now, it may be one to remember for the future...
Also, how well do the 64-bit drivers of both companies perform?