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…
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Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
Didn't anyone notice that Ati doesn't do dynamic glows in Jedi Academy with the 3.7 cats!? Look at the lightsabre and it's clearly visible. They only work with the 3.6 cats and then they REALLY kill performance (It's barley playable in 800*600 here on my Radeon 9700 PRO)Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
funny to see that ati fanboys can't believe that nvidia can bring drivers without cheats. And nobody talk about the issues in TRAOD with ATI cards, really very nice...Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
WTH did you benchmark one card with unreleased drivers (something you said you would never, ever do in the past) and use micro-sized pictures for IQ comparisons?You might as well have used 256 colors.
The Catalyst 3.8's came out today - the 51.75 drivers will not be availible for an indeterminate amount of time. Yet you bench with the Cat 3.7's and use a set of unreleased and unavailible drivers for the competition.
I suggest you peruse this article:
http://www.3dcenter.org/artikel/detonator_52.14/
from 3DCenter (german) to learn just how one goes about determining how IQ differs at different settings with the Nvidia 45's, 51's, and 52's.
Needless to say, everyone else who has compared full-sized frames in a variety of games and applications has found the 5X.XX nvidia drivers (all of them) do selective rendering, and especially lighting.
And why claim the lack of shiny water in NWN is ATi's fault?
Bioware programmed the game using an nvidia exclusive instruction and did not bother to program for the generic case until enough ATI and other brand users complained.
This is the developer's fault, not a problem with the hardware or drivers.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
Nice article. I like that you benched so many games.Unfortunately you missed that the Det52.14 driver does no real Trilinear Filtering in *any* DirectX game, regardless of whether you're using anisotropic filtering or not. This often can't be seen in screenshots but in motion only. Please have a look here:
http://www.3dcenter.de/artikel/detonator_52.14/
There is *NO* way for a GeForceFX user to enable full trilinear filtering when using Det52.14. No wonder the performance increased...
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
TR: AOD is a fine game, you just have to play it...Sure there are some graphical issues on the later levels but there's nothing wrong with the game as such and considering that it has made its way into a lot of bundles (sapphire and creative audigy 2 ZS to name two) I believe it will recieve a fair share of gameplay.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
You guys need to stop talking about gabe newell...for such a supposed good programmer he sure needs to learn about network security...We all know he's got his head up ATI's rearend. The funny part is that they are bundling hl2 with the 9800xt (a coupon) when it isn't coming out until april now. Who's to say who will have the better hardware then? Doom 3 will likely be out by then. In 4 months when the new cards are out you guys won't care who makes the better card the 12 year old fan-boys will be up in arms in support of their company. I owned the 5900u and sold it on ebay after seeing the hl2 numbers. I then bought a 9800pro from newegg and on the first tried ordering the 9800xt from ati which said it was in stock. 2 days later they told me my order was on backorder and hassled me when I wanted to cancel. One thing I'd point out is that war3 looks much better on the 5900u then the 9800. It looks really dull on the 9800 where it's bright and cartoony (like it should be) on the geforce. Either way who knows what the future will hold for both companies but let's hope they both succeed to keep our prices low....Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
i took over #41's original post... i didnt like his tone :|Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
IQ part was crappy at best. small screenshots in open not-so-detailed areas and sometimes there was no option for a big one to check.You can call me what you want, but there are quite a few reviews there that will disagree BIG time with what has been posted about IQ here. And it is impossible all of them are wrong on this at the same time.
HomeWorld has shadow issues in ATI cards with cat 3.7, yet that ain't shown there anyways....this goes for both ways.
If you ask me, NVidia got his DX9 wrapper to work fine this time.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
Um what happened to post #41 where the guy detailed all the inconsistencies of the IQ comparisons? Please don't tell me you guys actually modded that post....I haven't had the chance to go through everything yet but those few I did, I definitely saw differences even in these miniscule caps (how about putting up some full size links next time guys?).. particularly in the AA+AF ones. It's obvious theres still quite a difference in their implementations.
I was also surprised at the number of shots that weren't even of the same frame. Honestly, how can you do a IQ test if you aren't even going to use the same frames? A split second difference is enough to change the output because of the data/buffer/angle differences etc.
Personally I wonder what happened to the old school 400% zoom IQ tests that Anand was promising and I'm fairly disappointed despite the number of games in this article.
That said, I am glad that Nvidia didn't botch up everything entirely and hopefully they'll have learned their lesson for NV4x.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link
Where can i get the 52.14 drivers?