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
Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour
The recently released expansion to the very popular Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game Command & Conquer Generals seems to do a good job of living up to the standards set by its prestigious ancestry. RTS games usually get overlooked in GPU roundups and comparisons as they aren’t considered graphically intense. However, smoothness is very important to gameplay; goodness knows I’ve blamed plenty of lost armies on ill timed drops in framerate. For this benchmark, we created a multiplayer game consisting of 6 hard armies on one team with us, and one easy army. We then used the replay feature in conjunction with FRAPS to measure performance. This was done with and without 4xAA/8xAF.
In this first test we can see that all the ATI cards are huddled together at the top while the nvidia cards lag behind. Clearly this game favors the ATI architecture. One of NVIDIAs strong points, memory bandwidth, doesn't get a chance to shine in this game as its mostly small textures and low poly objects with some pretty cool particle effects. That kind of setup just doesn't tilt in NVIDIAs favor.
Even with AA and AF enabled neither camp is severely hampered; and the only card that really drops off significantly is the 9600 Pro. The fact that the FX 5900 and NV38 are neck and neck suggests that the reason for NVIDIAs performance in this benchmark has something to do with an aspect of the architecture that isn't directly (or significantly?) affected by GPU core clock or memory bus bandwidth/speed; more than likely we're talking about driver issues here.
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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?