System Setup and Notes
Hardware
- ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition Reference Board, R420, 256MB, AGP8X, 520/1120
- NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra Reference Board, NV40, 256MB, AGP8X, 400/1100
- ASUS ATI Radeon 9800 XT/VTD, R360, 256MB, AGP8X, 412/730
- AMD Athlon FX-51, 1MB L2, 2200MHz
- ASUS SK8V, VIA K8T800, Socket 940
- 1GB Corsair XMS3500R, 2-3-2-6, DDR400
- Western Digital WD360G Raptor, SATA
Software
- Windows XP Professional w/SP1
- DirectX 9.0b Runtime
- NVIDIA Detonator Release 60, 60.72
- ATI CATALYST 4.5*, Display Driver 8.01 (X800 XT)
- ATI CATALYST 4.4, Display Driver 8.00 (9800XT)
- 3DMark 2001SE Build 340
- 3DMark03 v3.4.0
- Call of Duty v1.1.1412
- Unreal Tournament 2003 v2225
- X2 - The Threat
- Serious Sam: Second Encounter
- ShaderMark 2.0
- D3D RightMark 1.0.4.9 PB3
- Realtime High Dynamic Range Image-Based Lighting v1.2
- D3D FilterTest v1.3
- FRAPS 2.1
Notes
The X800 XT gets to scrap with 6800 Ultra and 9800 XT using BETA CATALYST drivers (which I think will be validated and WHQL'd as CATALYST 4.5 in the very near future).Time constraints prevent me from looking at display driver quality too much, so everything was tested at the maximum possible image quality settings provided by the driver control panel (High Quality). That means full trilinear texture filtering throughout and lack of any Compressonator analysis between High Quality, Quality and Performance driver settings.
Basically it was made to work as hard as possible at all times, at each tested display setting.
Tested resolutions and settings are identical to the NV40 article.
1024x768, no aniso, no anti-aliasing, full trilinear filtering
1024x768, 8X aniso, 4X anti-aliasing, full trilinear filtering
1024x768, 16X aniso, 8X(NV40)/6X(R420 & R360) anti-aliasing, full trilinear
1280x1024, 16X aniso, 8X(NV40)/6X(R420 & R360) anti-aliasing, full trilinear
1600x1200 with 16X aniso and 4X anti-aliasing numbers were recorded ready for when NVIDIA can get a 6800 Ultra back to us for futher testing. I'll update this article with updated graphs as soon as that happens.
For people that'll moan about the 8X AA mode choice for the NV40 yet again, it's the highest AA mode the card supports and people buying the cards will, quite rightly, assume that they can just whack everything up to maximum and still have playable framerates. That's the 8X mode on NV40 and it's slow, there's no escaping it. A "fairer" mode comparison will have to wait for NVIDIA to supply another NV40.
Clocks
Retail clock frequencies (520MHz core, 1120MHz memory) for the XT PE were set in stone at the last minute, causing some review boards to arrive at reviewers with clocks that were slightly out, for both core and memory.The review sample arrived set to 526.5MHz core, 1147.5MHz memory.
Powerstrip was then used to set the correct clocks at each subsequent reboot, throughout all testing.
