3DMark 2001SE
Gaming begins, as usual, with our foray into the synthetic benchmark world of 3DMark 2001SE.
The Xabre pulls out a decent lead when run at the default TexTurbo 3 setting but falls back by around 15% when run with the more comparable TexTurbo 0 setting. 1024x768x32 still leaves room for the CPU to do the work, especially shading, so how does raising the resolution effect the results ?
Running like for like, the Xabre now falls over 20% behind the Radeon 9000. The inflated TexTurbo 3 scores keep it ahead for now.
ATi's impressive bandwidth-saving techniques come to the fore here as it eclipses even the TexTurbo 3 scores of the Xabre card. With the vertex shading on the Dragothic level handed over to the CPU on the Xabre, it cannot match the hardware support on the ATi card. The difference grows further here. Interesting to say the least.
