Detonator 40 Evaluation


Detonator 40 Evaluation - Page 2

NVIDIA Detonator 40 Evaluation
New Features And Enhanced Performance

By -Chris Angelini
August 30, 2002

NVKeystone
Real-Time Projector Corrector

An essential part of preparing for a presentation is ensuring that the projector is properly aligned and focused.  Often times, the room configuration doesn?t facilitate an easy set-up.  Should it become necessary to use a projector at an obscure angle, NVKeystone makes it possible to adjust the final display in real-time.  Additionally, 2D, 3D and video acceleration are all supported through the projector output.

HotHardware Test System
Powered by the 2.8GHz Pentium 4

PNY Verto GeForce4 Ti 4600 128MB

Detonator 40.41

Detonator 30.28

 

ATI RADEON 9700 Pro

v.7.75

 

Common Hardware:

Pentium 4 2.8GHz

Intel i850E Reference Motherboard

IBM 30GB ATA-100 7200RPM Hard Drive

Sound Blaster Live! Value

A Few Words About The Benchmarks:
In setting up our test machines, we install Windows XP on a formatted, FAT32 hard drive.  After installing the relevant drivers we disable system restore, all of the graphical enhancements in Windows XP, and the Automatic Update feature.  The desktop on each test bed is set to 1024x768, 16-bit color and a 75Hz refresh rate.

All of the benchmarks run with maximum detail settings include maximum texture detail and geometric detail.  Furthermore, all benchmarks were run at 1600x1200 at 32-bit color.

3D Mark 2001 SE
Synthetic DirectX 8.1 Benchmark

NVIDIA is able to squeeze an extra seven percent out of the GeForce4 Ti 4600 in 3D Mark 2001.  Of course, synthetic results are hardly indicative of real-world gaming, so let's take a look at Quake III performance.

Quake III
OpenGL Benchmark

Quake III is one of the most popular benchmarks, so it is very probable that NVIDIA has already dedicated a significant amount of time to optimizing performance.  The Detonator 40.41 drivers are able to expose an extra three percent, though.  Comparatively, the RADEON 9700 Pro is still immensely faster, besting the Ti 4600 by no less than 25 percent. 

Comanche 4
Another DirectX 8 Benchmark

There are several reasons to test with more than one benchmark.  Comanche 4 illustrates exactly why.  Whereas many of the other benchmarks show an impressive performance gain, performance is actually lost by switching to the new drivers here.  Once again, the RADEON 9700 Pro takes the victory overall by about 11 percent.

More Benchmarks and Conclusion... 


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