Leadtek WinFast A300 Ultra TD MyVIVO

Leadtek WinFast A300 Ultra TD MyVIVO
A "Friendly" GeForceFX 5800 Ultra...

By - Marco Chiappetta
April 25, 2003

Regardless of whether or not you think Futuremark's 3DMark03 is a meaningful benchmark, the bottom line is that it remains one of the only programs out there that uses DirectX 9 class pixel and vertex shaders (at least in one of the tests!) in a simulated game environment.  Until we have some true DX9 class games available to accurately test performance, 3DMark03 is "it".  We ran 3DMark03 on all of the cards represented here, at the benchmark's default settings...

Benchmarks With 3DMark03 The Controversial Synthetic DX9 Benchmark

LEADTEK A300 ULTRA TD

RADEON 9800 PRO

RADEON 9700 PRO

RADEON 9500 PRO

The 3DMark03 overall scores show the Leadtek A300 Ultra and Radeon 9800 Pro performing at virtually identical levels (5404 vs. 5410), with both cards coming in a comfortable margin ahead of the 9700 and 9500 Pros.  Pay attention to the performance results from the individual tests though.  You'll notice the Leadtek card pulled ahead of the Radeon 9800 Pro in only the "Mother Nature" and the Multi-Texturing Fill Rate tests.  All of the other tests belong to the 9800 Pro.

Head-to-Head Performance With Comanche 4 Looks Like Recent New Footage

Next up, we have some numbers from an actual DirectX 8 class game, Novalogic's combat helicopter simulator, Comanche 4.  Comanche 4 makes use of DX8 pixel and vertex shaders to produce some of the realistic visuals used throughout the game.  This benchmark is heavily influenced by CPU and system memory performance, so don't be confused by what look like relatively "low" frame rates here...

At 1024x768 without AA and with 4X AA enabled, all of the cards except for the GeForce 4 Ti 4600 perform at similar levels.  Once we enabled 6X AA and Anisotropic filtering however, the Radeon 9800 Pro led the pack, followed by the 9700 Pro and then the FX 5800 Ultra powered Leadtek A300 Ultra.  When the resolution was raised to 1600x1200, we have a similar scenario, with the Radeon 9800 Pro outpacing all of the other cards, in every configuration.  In the "4X AA + Aniso" tests, the A300 Ultra did manage to nudge ahead of the 9700 Pro, by a very slim margin.

Some Quake 3 & UT2003 Benchmarks