System setup and notes
Basic setup
- Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz 533FSB CPU
- ABIT IT7-MAX v1 i845E motherboard
- 512MB
Corsair XMS3200 memory run at DDR356 speeds asynchronously - Alpha 8942T cooler
- Maxtor 200GB 8MB Cache hard drive
- Pioneer 105 DVD/RW
- 420w Samcheer PSU
- Samsung 181T 18.1" TFT
- Hansol 920D 19" flat CRT for 1600x1200x32 tests
Video Cards used
- ATi Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB
(380/680)
- ATi Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB (324/620)
- NVIDIA GeForce FX Ultra 5800 (500/1000)
Software
- Windows XP Professional Build 2600.xpclient.010817-1148
Notes
Each card was benchmarked after a fresh install of Windows XP Pro. The Radeon 9800 Pro arrived with a set of new drivers on CD-R, the 6307s. I tried without success to install the standard 6292 driver set on the 9800 Pro, and also tried installing the newer 6307 set on the Radeon 9700 Pro. Both met with inf errors. Therefore it becomes a little unclear whether the performance graphs on the following pages are more to do with hardware or software efficiency. I, however, believe that it's more to do with hardware, as overclocking a standard Radeon 9700 Pro to 9800 levels gives the same, basic (without AA or AF) results as the faster card.
I'll be conducting benchmarks at 1024x768x32, 1280x1024x32 (or 1280x960 in the case of UT2003) and 1600x1200x32. Each benchmark was run three times to see if the initial result was truly indicative of card in question. All of the benchmarks will be run with no image enhancement, but both UT2003 and Serious Sam 2, being based on popular games engines now, will undergo the anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering treatment at (2x AA / 4x AF), (4x AA, 8x AF), and the respective cards' maximum levels (6x AA, 16x AF for the Radeons and 8x AA, 8x AF for the FX). As these powerful cards are all about maximum image quality, inspection of their performance with varying loads should give us some idea of where they stand.
Using the latest build of Powerstrip, the sample overclocked to 420MHz core and 750MHz memory without any real difficulty. This is in a room with an ambient temperature of 21c and a case with no extra cooling. Finally, I'm using a 4x AGP motherboard even though both cards support 8x AGP. Testing on an 8x AGP board showed little or no increase.
