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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
263 Comments
View All Comments
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