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
Cheatonators are NOT USING True Trilinear filtering in EVERY DX game.
WAKE UP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
who cares about Nvidia anymore.....
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Why not stating if these games are rather OpenGL, DirectX 8 or DirectX 9 Games...Looks Like Nvidia is ahead in OpenGl games (Homeworld 2 and Never Winter Nights for example). And ATI in Direct X Games...
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
WOW, look at all those DX9 benchmarks!!!!!!LOL
He is using drivers that are NOT available to the public(51.75), there are no IQ test(yet) and he has already come to a conclusion.
Bye bye Anand you are over for me!!!!
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Cheatonators 5x.xx are used in this review!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!REDICOULOUS as ANAnD
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
ANAND + NVIDIA = this review of shit.PERIODianmills - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
I've lost my faith in you as an impartial reviewer.The idea to do all tests at 1024x768 was just PLAIN STUPID.
The difference between the cards is way higher at higher resolutions... The results are much different at the other sites
Reading this interview one could conclude that the 9800xt is only 20-30% faster than the 9600pro
This is crap Anandtech. Either shape up or you've lost another reader.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
I would Like To see widely played Driving games like Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2,4X4 Evo 2not that driving Anadtech Put in.I Request Anadtech to atleast include Need for speed Hot Pursuit 2.
Jeff7181 - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
#121...Quake 3 is used because it's CPU limited, not limited by video cards... so if a new CPU can run the game faster, that's an indiciation of it's performance... new games like HL2 and Doom3 tend to be more video card dependant than CPU dependant.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
lock on:modern air combatcall of duty
NASCAR Thunder 2004
Need for speed:HP
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
I think it is becoming clear that ATI cards are superior in DX9 games, and are the way to go. Sad for us Geforce owners. Hopefully though, Nvidia will address this and come to market with their next gen cards (not this new batch...the next) having a lot better DX9 performance--for the entire DX9 spec.If I were buying a card now, it'd be an ATI....but I don't think Nvidia is going to sit still, their new cards will be competitive.