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HotHardware's Test Setup |
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The
testbed for this graphic goodness |
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How We
Configured Our Test System:
We tested these cards on an i865PE "Springdale" based Asus
P4P800 Deluxe motherboard, powered by an Intel Pentium 4 2.4CGHz CPU (800MHz System
Bus). The first
thing we did when configuring this test system was enter the
BIOS and load the "High Performance Defaults". Then we
set the memory to operate at 200MHz (Dual DDR400) with the CAS Latency and other memory timings set by SPD and the
AGP aperture size set to 256MB. The hard drive was
formatted and Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 1 was
installed. After the installation completed, we installed
the latest Intel chipset drivers and then hit the Windows Update
site to download and install all of the available updates. Next, we
installed all of the necessary drivers
for the rest of our components and Windows Messenger was
disabled and removed from the system. Auto-Updating and
System Restore were also disabled, the hard drive was
de-fragmented, and a 768MB permanent page file was created.
Lastly, we set Windows XP's Visual Effects to "best
performance", installed all of the benchmarking software and
ran all of the tests.
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Performance Comparisons
With AquaMark3 |
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DX8
and DX9 Benchmarks under the sea |
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Aquamark 3 comes to us by the way of
Massive Development,
and is the first of our tests to be based on a real game
engine. Massive's release of the game Aquanox in 1999
was panned by critics, yet was one of the first to
implement DX8 shaders, which led to the creation of
Aquamark 2, another benchmark used by many reviewers.
Since the Aquamark benchmarks are based on a real gaming
environment, they must support old and new cards (and
therefore technologies) alike. Thus, Aquamark 3
utilizes not only DirectX 9 shaders, but DirectX 8 and 7
as well. We ran this at 1024x768x32 and 1600x1200 with no
anti-aliasing, then again with 4x AA enabled in the
drivers. |
The first victory in our series of battles went to the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra. Its 43.04 frames per second at
1024x768 was the highest of any of the cards, although the
twin team of Radeon 9800 cards trailed closely behind.
The midrange priced 5900XT card from e-VGA followed next in
line, about another 5 fps behind the 9800 Pro. For its
price, however, it handily beat the two other sub $200
cards, the 5700 Ultra and 9600XT. At 4XAA, the Radeon
9800s regain the top rank, only dropping off 10-15% from
their original scores. The performance hit on the 5950
Ultra was much more pronounced, as it dropped a full 20%.
In general, the performance lost when applying anti-aliasing
was always greater for the GFFX cards than for the
Radeons. At 1600x1200, we saw the same relative
breakdown that we saw at the lower resolution, except this
time the 9800XT held a slim lead over the 5950 Ultra.
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Benchmarks
With Halo |
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Finally on the PC, Where it Belongs |
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Although the release of Halo marked the end of a long
wait, since it was originally released as an Xbox
exclusive a few years back, it hasn't fared too well on
the PC. No additional patches or tweaks are needed to
use this game's built-in benchmarking utility, however,
as Gearbox has included all of the information needed in
their README file. The benchmark runs through four of
the cut scenes from the game, after which the average
frame rate is displayed. We ran it twice, once at
1024x768 and again at 1280x1024. Anti-aliasing doesn't
work properly with this game at the moment, so all of
the tests below were run with anti-aliasing disabled. |
The 5950 Ultra and 9800XT both gave us 51.72 frames per
second at 1024x768, sharing the lead. The 9800 Pro was
just a hair behind at 51.18 fps. The 5900XT was all by
itself it fourth place, settling in midway between the
performance of the high-end cards and the other two
mid-range cards. It's almost as if the 5900XT in a class of
it's own. The 9600XT and 5700 Ultra battled it out to
see which would come in last, and this time it was the
9600XT which took the dubious honor. At 1280x1024, we saw a
little more of a shakedown, with the 5950 Ultra pulling
slightly ahead of the 9800XT. There was also a much
more defined gap between these two and the 9800 Pro, whose
performance was more on par with the 5900XT.
Unreal Tournament 2003 & Splinter Cell Testing
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