We
have been looking for a useful real-world gaming
benchmark other than Quake3 and MDK2 seems to be
taking its place in the field as a fairly
predictable and stable tool. Here is what we
found with the Siluro GF256 and we have compared
it to stiff competition, the ATI Radeon 64MB VIVO.
MDK2
Time Demo Tests
In 32
bit color, the Radeon blows by the 64MB GeForce at
1024X768 and higher. Even heavily
over-clocked, it can't keep up at the higher
resolutions. These scores were taken on the
exact same test machine. We are not sure why
the Radeon has an advantage here because, in the
following tests, you will see the GeForce2 64MB
Siluro close the gap and surpass it when
over-clocked.
Update
8/11/00
We
became aware after publishing this test, that the
Radeon's default driver setting actually converts
all textures to 16 bit color versus the GeForce2's
standard 32 bit color mode for textures in this
game, while in 32 bit color mode. This puts
the GeForce2 at a considerable disadvantage in the
above test and in fact the above chart is not an
"apples to apples"
comparison. We may elect to come
back to this test and run it again with both 32
and 16 bit color textures, as well as overall
color depth. This current test actually
shows even more positively for the GeForce2 GTS.
Quake
3 Arena Time Demo Tests
Once
again, the Radeon shows an advantage, albeit
small, in 32 bit color at the higher
resolutions. However, take a look at what
happens when we turn it up a notch on the Siluro.
My
Lord... I am in love. 1024X768X32 at over
100 frames per second. We didn't include any
over-clocked Radeon scores here because the card
barely got past its default speed without locking
up. In addition, as we noted in our Radeon
review, over-clocking the card doesn't
actually help much with the numbers anyway.
More
Over-clocking, FSAA and The Rating
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