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Benchmarking With Quake 3
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OpenGL |
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Now, what OpenGL
test would be complete without a run at Quake 3? The
reign Quake 3 has had, as a leading OpenGL stress test, has
been impressive to say the least. Even though video
cards have increased in power and technology tenfold since
it was first released, Quake 3 has held firm as a formidable
stress test, for even the most powerful of gaming cards.
With Serious Sam SE, the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 did a
fine job of handling the OpenGL test, closing the gap with
nVidia's finest. The question remains, how will the
All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 perform with this legacy benchmark
utility? Well, we set the test to "High Quality" and
maxed out the textures and let the cards do their stuff.
Let's take a look...
Here we see the
All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 gave both Ti's a closer race,
tying the Ti500's performance. Even while overclocked,
the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 couldn't oust the Ti4600.
Perhaps as the drivers of the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500
mature, we may see these scores tip in favor of the Radeon.
As the
resolution increased, the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 lost
further ground to the Ti4600, while the older Ti500 held
firm.
Even at
1600x1200, the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 couldn't beat the
Ti500, although it was VERY close. In the next test we
turned up the heat with the addition of 4X Full Screen
Anti-Aliasing to the test to see how well the games
performed without sacrificing visual quality.
Here we see the
true dominance of the Ti4600, although, traditionally nVidia
has held the upper hand when it comes to "Antialiasing."
The Ti4600 managed to pump out a playable 68.2 FPS at
1600x1200x32 with all settings maximized, while the
All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 was clearly not up to the task.
In our final
tests, we wanted to see how the All-In-Wonder card performed
with Anisotropic Filtering enabled compared to the Ti4600.
As Marco noted in his recent
8500LE review, it is important to note that nVidia and
ATi both handle Anisotropic filtering quite differently.
What NVIDIA calls 32-Tap Anisotropic filtering (4X in their
drivers) is not quite what ATi calls 32-Tap Anisotropic
filtering (8X in their drivers). On top of that, the
Radeon 8500 is not capable of true trilinear filtering with
Anisotropic filtering turned on, so with this test we set
Quake 3 to bilinear to keep things fair.
Here is where the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 takes control
and makes nVidia's more powerful Ti4600 bow to its
Anisotropic superiority. With this setting enabled,
the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 took a firm lead over the
Ti4600. The Ti4600 on the other hand dropped
tremendously with Anisotropic filtering enabled, compared to
without. Either way you look at it, Quake 3 is
playable with either card at 1280x1024x32.
Finally, we will
leave the 32-Tap Anisotropic filtering enable and tack on 2X
FSAA to pretty things up a bit.
Here the
All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 took a nose dive, slipping quite a
bit with even 2X FSAA enabled. The Ti4600 certainly
proved to be more up to the task, slipping a nominal 5FPS
compared to the previous test.
As far as
TV/Video card manufacturers go, ATi has continued to push
the envelope with the "All-In-Wonders" with ever increasing
power and features. The "All-In-Wonder" line of video
cards has continued to be some of the most impressive
graphics cards on the market and it doesn't look that is
going to change any time soon. From a TV/Video
card standpoint, the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 is one of the
most powerful TV/Video cards available, with good gaming
ability and advanced TV/Video features. While nVidia
has entered the game in recent months with their Personal
Cinema product line, ATi has been making TV/Video products
for yeas now and experience should give them the edge as
things heat up. It's no secret that the rivalry
between the two graphics giants is as competitive as ever
and we suspect that ATi will have its work cut out for them
to stay on top of the TV/Video card heap. One thing is
for sure, from a consumer standpoint, competition is a good
thing, and I'm sure we'll continue to see ground-breaking
products from both companies.
Although the
All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 didn't blow away the competition
with its benchmark scores, it still proved to be a
formidable opponent in most. Overall, the
All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 performed fairly well in most
tests and proved capable of running some of the most
graphically intensive games available. However, we
feel that the raw power of the 8500 GPU and RAM running at
275MHz. should have challenged the other reference cards a
little better. Instead, the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500
managed to stay a few steps behind the competition in the
majority of tests, sometimes yielding to older, less
powerful video cards. Perhaps as ATi's drivers
mature, the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 will narrow the gap
with its competitors and prove to be more of a performance
leader.
All told, ATi
has continued to improve upon the "All-In-Wonder" line,
evolving it into an ever impressive product with increasing
power and cutting edge features. With the release of
the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500, ATi can now offer the gamer a
TV/Video card solution that will give them good gaming
performance and an amazing array TV and video features.
When you consider what is available from the competition,
the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 should keep ATi on top for a
while in this niche'. How long is anyone's guess.
We give ATi's
All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 a Hot Hardware Heat Meter Rating
of an 8.5.
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