Review: Hercules Radeon 9800 Pro

So the PD graph from 3DMark 2001SE showed the inherent strengths and weaknesses of each architecture on that kind of test. 8x1 boards doing better than the 4x1 solution due to having twice the power at the same clocks and double the bandwidth at the same clocks. Then we saw R350 and its increased efficiency over R300 take things a step futher. Will that happen with Quake 3, which renders things a lot differently? Here's the base.

It's not GPU core performance that's the reason for 9600 Pro dropping off here, there's way to much of a surplus of that. The main reason is memory bandwidth. It's also the reason for 9800 Pro's lead over 9700 Pro. Hercules off to a flyer yet again.

More of the same as we turn on IQ, all cards putting in a speedy turn and the results ordering themselves as we'd expect.

Again, with twice the render power and memory bandwidth at the same clocks as a card like 9600 Pro, both R350 in the Hercules and R300 in the Sapphire are able to hold their performance much more easily. R350's clock increase and efficiency improvements are the cause for the win. The PD graph will let us see a bit better, how each architecture handles the Q3 render case (and therefore performance in games like Medal Of Honour).

As we can see, especially when the pixel count hits the roof, 9800 Pro is able to keep performance over the rest. Hercules really did build a Hercules.

A different type of test now, DX8 class of rendering, but with OpenGL. Serious Sam 2 is a good test of IQ features too.