 |
| ATI's
Test System |
| Standard
fair... |
|
Pentium
III 866MHz., Asus CUBX Motherboard (BX chipset,
BIOS 1005), 128MB PC-133 2-2-2 RAM, SoundBlaster
PCI 128, WD 10GB HD and 3Com NIC
 |
| Benchmarks
with the Radeon |
| Oh
yeah, we dig this... |
|
3D
Mark 2000 Tests
First
let’s take a look at the 3D Mark 2000 scores…
Troubling
and exciting at the same time, huh?
Other than the high scores, you’ll also
notice quite a few blank areas in this graph.
The blank areas designate a test either “hanging”
the system, or dropping to desktop.
Unfortunately with the test system we used
it is very tough to pinpoint whether or not this
was a driver issue, or a hardware issue.
Remember, that using a BX motherboard set
to 133MHz. FSB results is a HIGHLY overclocked AGP
slot (89MHz. as opposed the default 66MHz.).
At 1600X1200X32 the test completed, but
with a multitude of dropped textures.
We
also ran 3D Mark with hardware T&L disabled to
see what kind of affect the Radeon’s T&L
unit was having on the scores:
Again,
the blank spots on the chart signify a test that
“crashed” in one way or another.
Also notice that using PIII T&L results
in higher scores at all resolutions.
This could mean that either the Radeon’s
T&L unit meets it’s match once a PIII 866 or
higher is used, or that 3D Mark 2000 is showing it’s
age and not even stressing the hardware. You
can compare notes to the type of performance the
GeForce 2 will yield in these tests, here
from our Elsa Gladiac review.
MDK2
Tests
I’ve
been playing a TON of MDK2, and am familiar with
its performance, so I ran it’s built-in time
demo in a variety of ways also:
I
speak from experience…these scores are
excellent. Notice
the sharp drop once FSAA is enabled.
We
used PowerStrip to overclock the Radeon in this
test. We
kept the clockrates in sync with one another (core
/ memory), but you can adjust them independently
if you wish.
Notice however that at lower resolutions
over-clocking actually hurt performance. Also notice the anomaly at 1600X1200. I would attribute this mildly erratic behavior on driver
immaturity; hopefully things will mature quickly
with the Radeon.
We
also ran the MDK2 timedemo with hardware T&L
disabled:
The
scores were virtually identical.
The OMEN engine used in MDK2 is highly
optimized to run with your CPU, but this is yet
another test showing that hardware accelerated
T&L has not yet come of age.
Quake
3 Arena Bencmarks and the all important FSAA |
