Benchmarks I
3DMark 2001SE starts off our benchmarking run. With faster and faster host processors, coupled with powerful graphics cards, the default resolution of 1024x768x32 has become something of a system benchmark. Anyway, we'll be conducting our benchmarks at 1024x768x32, 1280x1024x32, and 1600x1200x32, in that order.
Forget about the 14,000 mark barrier, we crash through the 15,000 barrier with a Pentium 4 2.8GHz CPU and a stock Radeon 9700 Pro at 1024x768x32. The reason that the Ti 4600 is as close as it is, is due to the fact that NVIDIA launched a newer set of Detonator drivers, version 40.41, that dramatically increased the Ti 4600's vertex and pixel shading ability. Even with increase, the Radeon 9700 manhandles the Ti 4600 as we raise the resolution scale. First blood to the Radeon. Its extra shading pipes and massive bandwidth give it a decisive edge.
Back to our old favourite in Quake 3. 1.30 point release and set to maximum quality.
The previous champion gets a bloody nose at all resolutions. ~ 20GB/s of bandwidth does that to you, though. I remember when breaking 60fps at 1600 quality was impressive. That was with a Geforce2 Ultra. The Radeon 9700 triples that benchmark.
Codecreatures Pro, a benchmark that's caught my eye lately, stresses the GPU, or VPU as ATi now call it, like no other benchmark that I've seen. If you've seen the nature test in 3DMark 2001SE, you'll have some idea of the realism involved.
From a quick observation, it appears as if the Radeon 9700 Pro can emulate the Ti 4600's benchmarks at a higher resolution. The benchmark gives you a final score, too. The Ti 4600 scores 2408 marks and the R9700 is just shy of the 3,000 mark with 2997.
The above set of benchmarks have shown what kind of performance increases can be expected with standard image quality without any of our aforementioned anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. I'm now going to include a couple of games that interest me personally. I'll be conducting in-depth analysis on Serious Sam 2 and Medal of Honour: Allied Assault.
