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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Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
For all the people complaining about the cheat-y Dets, remember that Part 2 will be Image Quality based.. that's when you'll get your licks in.Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
#120, i said almost the exact same thing back in post #6 :PAnonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
I'd like to see both 45.23 and Det 50s for nV cards. Also, yeah, serious CPU limit here.Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Ummm wtf are you using 1024x768 for?! Did you not notice the scores being so close. Especially when 9600 is close to 9800xt. Omg. What crap. Use 1290x960 or 1600x1200 AT LEAST IN ADDITION to 1024 by 768. Almost all of the graphs look cpu limited.How about we at least TRY to stress the 500$ cards next time OK???
And use the non cheating Detonators next time too will you? As in 43.30 or whatever they are. I want to see how bad the nv38 burns when you take out the cheats.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Stay off my machine you moron!Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Hi, my name is Bigshot and I wanna say I love your review! I think we now know that Nvidiot will be gone soon and it will be great just to have ATI!ATI! All the way!
ATI Rocks! and if you love Nvidia like I love my ATI watch out man!
Did you see the new Heat freakin sinks on the 9800XT? Did you see the cool flame job on them?
ATI!
Keep up the great work Anad!
ATI rocks them all! I should know.
Cause I got me one!
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
I guess this is all an early (or late) April Fools... Well, in Fact exactly 1/2 a year (6 months) later...Wow, 2 fools in a Year ! Great !!
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTA2NDg1OT...ALL DX9 games are OVER for NVIDIA !!!! PERIOD
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
FS2004 is a DX8 game!Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
FS2004 has the abilty to save a flight that can be used as a canned demo for benchmarking, variables like ATC must be turned off.FS2004 loads settings according to your hardware and it is up to the tester to make sure that ALL settings are identical. As the numbers indicate that was not done.
I would know, I watched the FS2004 GPU race in SD last month and something is very wrong with those posted in this review, ATI 9600 beats 5900-Ultra? LOL!!!
Please get some help!