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
AquaMark 3
Despite what some people would like everyone to think, Aquamark3 is really a test of how people developing software now envision DirectX 9 pixel and vertex shaders will be used in the future. The situation is very reminiscent of the first Sony PlayStation: the first games that used the technology were limited by the hardware until developers really learned to work with the hardware rather than on the hardware. As time progressed, we went from what were essentially ports of 16bit console games to amazingly complex and beautiful games like Gran Turismo 2. The same thing will happen with shader technology, and no amount of guessing and throwing functions at a gpu will tell you how its performance will really be in the future. Essentially, my advice is that any piece of software that claims it is a valid predictor of future performance should be taken lightly. We based our decision to include Aquamark3 on its popularity in the community. Aquamark3 is a cool piece of software, with some pretty neat tests, and a high score in any benchmark can still earn bragging rights in the forums. The only Aquamark3 test we ran was the publicly available 1024x768 4xAF noAA in order to maximize the usefulness of these numbers to the community. Our drivers were set to allow application control of AF and AA.
We can see almost a pairing off of the cards in direct competition with one another from each camp. ATI pulls ahead by an insignificant margin in the case of the top cards, but the 5600 Ultra falls way behind in this test. Image quality appears to have improved for NVIDIA in this benchmark over what has been reported of previous drivers, and the NV38 handled the massive overdraw portion of the test the smoothest of all the cards. We will be taking a much closer look at image quality very soon, but until then, it looks like ATI and NVIDIA have equal footing in the Aquamark3 arena and we are left to find more useful information about their differences elsewhere. We would also like to point out that the 9700 Pro held its own in this test inching out the standard 9800.
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Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
- no contrast between AVAILABLE nvidia detonators and the UNRELEASED drivers used to benchmark.- it was unclear which games were using dx8 or dx9 features for these benchmarks without having previous knowledge.
- more focus placed on performance with older existing games i.e. dx8, Arent top of the line $500 gfx cards intended for use with future games? i.e. dx9
- image quality issues not adequately discussed (major issues glazed over leaving false impressions of performance in 'some' cards), they may be covered in an upcoming article however alone this particular article may be misleading.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
#38 Well i made it hard for you to understand I guess because you are the only one who complained. Btw. I did not post #36. So there are more of us... :)Will sign with the whiner for now.
The whiner
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
I don't mind either. I still have my 3DFX Voodoo 3 and 32bit at all is only for whiners!Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
OK, you didn't mistype it, you just made it totally unclear and impossible for anyone to really understand. No big deal.However, to imply that Anandtech should have spent time doing IQ testing instead of NV38 testing is nothing sort of ridiculous. No one (except you apparently) wants to see IQ testing instead of NV38 testing.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
I d like to see q3 in your benchmarking suite again.it s still the only q3engine game where a brand new graphics card can run smoothly with Fsaa and AF on highest quality settings
important is also that the timedemo is full of action an filled with a lot of players
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
I have always been an Nvidia fanboy, and I don’t mind running my card in 16bit texture quality.Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
So I'm the only one who picked up on the "we'll do IQ in part 2" thing?Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Not that reviews was the subject. LOL Well, perhaps I don't know grammar better than you but I did not mistype anything.Fact is that "they" can only refer to "the other sites" and not Anandtech.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Okay, on other sites is not a subject but "they" can not refer to "reviews" (the context forbids that). So hopefully you understand now that "they" can only refer to "the other sites" since I did not mention Anandtech there. :)Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
#32 Okay a second time and I will take you by the hand (please respond with a joke about me being gay):This is what I wrote (the whole paragraph):
"Perhaps YOU are clueless. I don't need to wait for complete reviews on other sites. And yes, they might have had more time as they did not benchmark NV38. However that they did not get NV38 makes this review even more suspicious."
I wrote about reviews on other sites there. You see? From that moment on every "they" automatically refers to "the other sites" until I come up with a new subject? Okay? That is grammar and hard to understand but you will get there.