Review: Gainward FX5200 Ultra Pro/760 XP

As I've said numerous times before, Quake 3 is a pseudo-DX6 class of render test and has performed well in base configuration (no IQ) on GPU's for the past few years. Here's the base graph.

Slowest of the bunch, 9600 Pro is nearly 20% faster, even without IQ features on. Here's the first of our IQ related tests.

With Q3 being a lot less demanding on hardware than 3DMark 2001SE, it's surprising to see such a drop off in performance here. The PD graph will let us comment more, here's the 1600x1200 graph first before we take a look.

Even more surprising, the performance of the FX5200 Ultra verses the resolutely midrange 9600 Pro is very competetive in this test, although the score suggests the game wouldn't be playable. Here's the PD graph.

The worst of the bunch when putting IQ on, just like before, but a better effort than the ATI when we give it a load more pixels to generate. The same kind of graph as 3DMark then, so we can be sure nothing funny is going on. EXPERTool enhanced, we gain 3% at base, with ~1.5% in the IQ tests, over the stock clocked numbers in the graph. Not enough to take the board ahead of the midrange runners, but that's to be expected.

Another test.