Fall 2003 Video Card Roundup - Part 2: High End Shootout
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on October 7, 2003 5:30 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
An even more updated Test Suite
In Part 1 we introduced our new test suite; this edition brings some refinements and four additions, but (believe it or not) it is still not complete. It isn't our goal to simply throw numbers into space and see what happens, so we are really focusing on honing our benchmarks to make them as robust and accurate as possible. As such, we have had to forgo a few additions that we really wanted to make, and we've had to drop one of the titles we had included in Part 1. This is how the new suite looks as things stand for this article:
Aquamark3
C&C Generals: Zero Hour
EVE: The Second Genesis
F1 Challenge '99-'02
Final Fantasy XI
GunMetal
Halo
Homeworld 2
Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
Neverwinter Nights: Shadow of Undrendtide
SimCity 4
Splinter Cell
Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness
Tron 2.0
Unreal Tournament 2003
Warcraft III: Frozen Throne
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
X2: The Threat
Our previous Flight Simulator benchmark just didn't push the game far enough, and we are hard at work trying to find a benchmark that better reflects gameplay and is completely repeatable. We have really appreciated your feedback, and we ask that you continue to suggest games for possible inclusion in the suite. Just so you'll know what we already have slated to make it in "When their done" (to borrow from 3DRealms), these games will be added either as we finalize a benchmarking procedure for them or as they are released:
Doom3
MS Flight Simulator 2004
Battlefield 1942: Secret Weapons of WWII
Halflife 2
FIFA Soccer 2004
We wanted to include Battlefield in this review unfortunately we were still unable to come up with a repeatable test to include. We have looked at other tests on the net and would rather use something a bit more scientific if possible but it's going to take some more time. If anyone from the Battlefield community has any suggestions on how to reliably benchmark the game, we're all ears.
As we received some criticism that the CPU we used in Part 1 wasn't fast enough, we upgraded our testbed for Part 2; the test system we used is as follows:
AMD Athlon64 FX51
1GB DDR400 (2x512MB)
nForce3 motherboard
With all of that out of the way, it's time to get to the benchmarks…
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
117 Comments
View All Comments
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
#41, maybe you and your wife should start a website, you could benchmark ATI cards exclusively. That way ATI would always wind up on top. Admittedly, I'm an ATI junkie (I own a Radeon 8500 and plan to buy a 9600XT ASAP), but enough is enough. (By the way, what's up with the bread/butter analogy? You seem very fond of it.) Seriously, though, either of these cards are really fast and aside from IQ differences, you couldn't tell a difference. A little question for anyone who would know, though: How much does IQ drop going from PS2.0 to PS1.4? I have Halo and I'm wondering how much better it would look on a DX9 card instead of DX8.1.Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
if you look at the gunmetal screenshots, that is my only beef with ATI, the scenes are not rendering completely or properly it has happened to me in a lot of games, black areas.Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
The article does seem somewhat comprehensive that is true, but: a)other sites reviewing the software did not come to the same conclusions, mainly problems with trilinear and AF again.... b)I have yet to see a review that claims to be unbiased have this much opinion sprinkled all over, mainly pro nVidia which relies on IQ comparison which i refer to in a c)the drivers are beta and not whql so who knows what we'll get as consumers d)the hardware is not yet anounced formally by nVidia e)it seems the choice of what to show on graphs is very subjective,TRAOD shows percentage drops with PS 2.0 but what are the framerates?I do hope this review is correct because it means nvidia are back but due to the above stated qualms I have I can't trust this review.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
The article is extremely comprehensive, as one would expect from Anandtech. Some issues of note:1. It was pointed out that the 5900 and the 5950, in many areas, performed almost identically. This doesn't pose well for nVidia.
2. I'm bothered by the tremendous frame rate difference between ATi and nVidia in some of the titles. It leads me to believe there's something underlying going on, and it's not just a simple card/driver issue.
3. It's nice to see the IQ back to where it should be, as visual quality should never be compromised for performance, unless the user makes the adjustments to do so.
4. I will admit it sort of seems that there is some bias towards ATi, but it's not flamingly apparent. Again, it is just my perception, and doesn't necessarily mean that there is.
5. The most accurate remark made in this review is simply that we are not in the world of DX9 games...yet. To that end, DX9 performance is not nearly as important as it will be. When it is, I think things will step up a few notches.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
Nicely detailed article, and I appreciate the additional games for benchmarking. Any chance we could seee the use of a flight/combat sim program like IL-2 or Mechwarrior?Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
I don't know why everyone is believing the IQ results (or even trying to use Photoshop to check the differences). These pics are JPG's! They're already manipulated by the compression logic, and who's to say these pics are true?Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
Loooooong time reader, new poster.Excellent work Anand and Co. I found the article very informative, and although certain folks don't enjoy reading your "opinions" on some of the benchmarks, I thought they were very appropriate. It will be interesting to see how the official driver releases function under the latest and greatest DX9 and OpenGL games...
Thanks for all your hard work and effort!
Mike
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
#78The shots has not been taken in the same frame.
Gunmetal, contrary to Aquamark don't have such option....that's why so many screenshots are taken at the beginning of a scene or a dead spot.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
#67I seriously suggest that you upgrade everything else in your machine, reinstal drivers, game and defrag.
Mine runs perfectly at 1280*1024 with the max AF and displays between 40-60fps all the way using the cg_draw command and that's GAMEPLAY framerates .... with sound, AI and all the whistles. I see no need for AA at that resolution thou (not a nice IQ/performance trade there)....at 1024 it does wonders thou.
capodeloscapos - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
Why nobody said anything about IQ in GUN METAL???Only NvIdia 52.14 shows the fire in Mech's Gun.
What happened there???