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
- 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.