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The ATi Radeon
9800 Pro Full Release Review
ATi
Technologies Distances Itself From NVIDIA Once Again
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By,
Dave Altavilla
March 5, 2003
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Before you peer too long at
our test system below, we should let you know how much it
pains us to not have NVIDIA's latest flagship product
available to test along side the new ATi flagship. The
bottom line is this... NVIDIA has sent no more than a couple
of boards out to the largest sites, like Anandtech and Tom's
Hardware, and perhaps a few print publications and TV media.
The reason for this has become painfully obvious over the
past few weeks. The GeForce FX 5800 Ultra is simply
not a full ramp production vehicle for NVIDIA. Most
likely many of you will never be able to buy this board in
the retail channel. So why then spin up the press on
something that was no more than a noise maker?
Literally and figuratively... Simply put, there is no
sound strategy in that effort, nor is there much of an ROI.
And so as a result, we'll
have to compare the performance of the Radeon 9800 Pro for
you here, versus the fastest thing NVIDIA has out to the
retail channel to date, the GeForce 4 Ti 4600. When
you think about it, the performance metrics with this
comparison, are much more realistic. That is to say,
since you can't buy a GeForce FX 5800 Ultra, the benchmark
numbers are not much more than reference point at best.
With that said, if we ever
do get out hands on a GeForce FX 5800 Ultra, we'll surely
compare it to this family of product from ATi as well, so
you can get the complete picture. On a side note, we
are in possession of the NVIDIA Quadro FX, which we will be
covering versus ATi's latest FireGL (based on the R300 core)
product shortly.
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And Our Test System |
We utilized
the following hardware for our test-bed. Windows XP
Professional w/ SP1, along with Direct X 9, were used for
the OS and Direct X API.
HotHardware Test System:
Pentium 4 Northwood
Processor at 2.8GHz
Asus P4G8X - "Granite Bay" - i7205 Motherboard
1GB of Corsair PC3500 DDR RAM @ CAS2
ATi Radeon 9800 Pro
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti 4600
30GB 7200 RPM IBM Hard Drive
Windows XP Professional with SP1
DirectX 9.0
ATI Radeon Driver - Catalyst 3.1 Version 7.83 for Radeon
9700 Pro WHQL Driver
ATi Radeon Driver - Catalyst 3.1 Version 7.84 for Radeon
9800 Pro WHQL Candidate
NVIDIA Detonator Drivers Version 41.09 WHQL Driver
Intel Chipset Driver v4.30.1006
ATi
Catalyst 3.1 Drivers
The above control panels
are a few snaps from the latest version of the Cat 3.1
drivers from ATi. Nothing has really changed, in terms
of functionality, versus the drivers currently on ATi's site
for the Radeon 9700 series. However please note, we
had to use the 7.84 version Cat 3.1 drivers for the Radeon
9800 Pro and these would not install on the 9700 Pro board.
So we had to fall back to the 7.83 release of drivers for
that board.
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In Game Screenshots With AA and Anisotropic
Filtering |
| The best
looking graphics around |
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We always like to share
some in game footage with each new 3D Graphics Card
Showcase, here at HotHardware.com. Below, we've fired
up Unreal Tounament 2003 and Unreal II: The Awakening, for
your viewing pleasure. We've taken the shots here,
with no AA, 4X AA and 6X AA enabled. All captures were
take with 16X Anisotropic Filtering on as well
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UT2003 No AA
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UT2003 4X AA
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UT2003 6X AA
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Unreal II No AA
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Unreal II 4X AA
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Unreal II 6X AA
| You can easily see the
benefits of ATi's great looking AA methods in these screens.
The difference between no AA and 4X AA is very dramatic,
with only subtle benefits for 6X AA smoothness versus 4X
mode. Perhaps a Racing or Flight Sim would benefit
more from 6X AA, as it would limit "texture swimming" better
as well. However, in these First Person Shooter at
1024X768 and higher, the sweet spot is probably 4X AA, in
terms of image quality versus frame rate. However,
both games were completely playable with 6X AA and 16X AF
on, up to 1280X1024, with the Radeon 9800 Pro. The
image quality at this resolution, with this level of pixel
processing turned on, is really fantastic.
Enough already...
Benchmarks anyone?
Benchmarks! -
3DMark
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