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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Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
#22,/me waves.
Thanks for the personal attack though. I admit to not knowing every last detail about 3D that there is to know, but some things don't take an EE degree to figure out.
If you want to see my detailed reasons for not liking this review and its conclusion, read the following url:
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1743...
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
#73 makes a good point...but at the same time I've made a few observations on that note. I've seen a lot more motherboards with a gap between the AGP slot and PCI slots...and while some people would be led to believe it is just for Nvidia cards, this is most likely not the case. Graphics cards in general put out a lot of heat, and it's never a good idea to put a big card right next to your graphics card anyway, you're just begging for heat problems. For the most part it's just the Nvidia reference design that takes up two slots. The boards distributors usually use their own cooling anyway and plenty are available that only use one slot.What it all boils down to is that it's not the size it's how you use it. :)
Now as far as ON topic ;) I thought the benchmarks did what they should....they showed performance in today's popular games and some signs of what is to come. For those of you crying because there are no significant DX9 entries...guesss what...DX9 games aren't available in any kind of quantity and won't be any time soon. Granted there will be some, but the bulk of games that are released in the next 6 months will be built on DX8 with some DX9 features. By the time the publishers start churning out DX9 titles guess what...the new chips will be ready for release which will run full DX9 titles better.
Coincidence? Not at all. Does Nvidia or ATI want you to buy their 500 dollar card now and use it for the next two years...hell no. They want you to buy bleeding edge technology for now, then buy another new one in a year or less...and so on and so forth. There's a reason they release a whole line of cards at once (performance, mainstream, budget), that's so they can tackle the whole market with each release. If they make a card too good now you won't need to buy their next one...welcome to the world of trying to make money :).
Ok I'll stop rambling...good job with benchies Anand :)
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Please add a benchmark for MMORPGs of some sort to your suite (Dark Age of Camelot, Everquest, etc.)sorren - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
For those of us with 17"+ LCD Monitors, the 1280x1024 resolution results would be more useful since this is the most common native resolution for these monitors. The games look great, just as long as we keep some games other than just action and FPS games. I mostly play strategy and RPGs so it's good to see Warcraft and NWN on the list. Keep up the great work!Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
my guess is that because of the massive # of games that they were using for benchmarks...they didnt have time to test in more resolutions?also #42 makes a lot of good points.
Insomniac - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
#68: To be thourough:Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour
- 5600 Ultra -> 28.3 to 32.9
Homeworld 2: Benchmark 1
- 5600 Ultra -> 25.1 to 38.4
Homeworld 2: Benchmark 2
- NV38 -> 43.8 to 44.3
- 5600 Ultra -> 15.5 to 25
Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of the Undertide
- 5600 Ultra -> 26.9 to 30.5
Simcity 4
- 9800 Pro 256MB -> 55.7 to 56
- 9800 XT -> 55.7 to 56
- 9800 -> 55.4 to 56
- 9700 Pro -> 54.6 to 56
I included every card and benchmark I saw it on for thoroughness and to avoid being accused of being a fanboy. ;)
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
to question 75:If thats the case why dident they test the cards at 1280X1024 for this PRELIMINARY review as they do with all other high performance cards, seems sort of odd to me.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Just a friendly reminder:NV38 is still not a 'finished' design; and by finished I mean there is still not a publicly available set of drivers supporting the card. The card itself is not even publicly available much less on the OEM market, therefore it makes it rather difficult to fully benchmark this product. Likewise, to a certain extent the 9800XT is not a finished design even though it's on the market, as the Overdrive (ATI supported overclockin) feature is unavailable until the Catalyst 3.8 drivers become publicly available in the next week or so.
The point of this rant is that the information presented here in Anandtech's review is PRELIMINARY. Regardless of Anantech having engineering samples or final products, beta drivers or publicly available drivers, they can only work with what they have available to them at the present time, and when reading this review you HAVE to take that sort of non-explicitly-stated information into context to guage credibility.
Personally, I believe that given what is available at the present time Anandtech has done a very good job of providing a sample guage of what to expect from the newest 'refresh' video cards which are still incomplete in regards to being able to be all that they can be (special application optimizations not withstanding of course). While I would like to see them guage these cards against older cards as someone mentioned earlier in this thread to see if upgrading is worth it, I don't see the point of doing so until these products are fully completed (i.e.: they're readily available in stores and they have publicly available drivers).
So perhaps after the NV38 truly comes to market that would be a better time to insist on seeing an all-out battle of the GPU's. Just my two cents on the matter, have a good day.
Johnbear007 - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
I would like to see Battlefield 1942 addedAnonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
when is nvidia ganna work on making the card smaller so it doesnt take up a good pci slot