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HotHardware's Test Setup |
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All-powerful,
but for less than you'd expect |
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How We
Configured Our Test System:
To help fully explain the scores we have listed in the
following benchmarks, we felt it was necessary to first explain
how this system was set up.
We tested on an i865PE "Springdale" based Asus
P4P800 Deluxe motherboard that we have
reviewed in the past,
powered by an Intel Pentium 4 2.4CGHz CPU (800MHz System
Bus). The first
thing we did when configuring this test system was enter the
BIOS and load the "High Performance Defaults". Then we
set the memory to operate at 200MHz (Dual DDR400) with the CAS Latency and other memory timings set by SPD and the
AGP aperture size set to 256MB. The hard drive was
formatted and Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 1 was
installed. After the installation completed, we installed
the latest Intel chipset drivers and then hit the Windows Update
site to download and install all of the available updates,
with the exception of the items related to Windows
Messenger. Next, we installed DirectX 9.0b and all of the necessary drivers
for the rest of our components and Windows Messenger was
disabled and removed from the system. Auto-Updating and
System Restore were also disabled, the hard drive was
de-fragmented, and a 768MB permanent page file was created.
Lastly, we set Windows XP's Visual Effects to "best
performance", installed all of the benchmarking software and
ran all of the tests. All of the benchmarking was done with ATi's
and NVIDIA's drivers configured for maximum visual quality.
Our results should be reproducible when following the same
steps with a similarly configured system.
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Performance Comparisons
With AquaMark3 |
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DX8
and DX9 Benchmarks |
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Aquamark 3 comes to us by the way of
Massive Development,
and is the first of our tests to be based on a real game
engine. Massive's release of the game Aquanox in
1999 was panned by critics, yet was one of the first to
implement DX8 shaders, which led to the creation of
Aquamark 2, another benchmark used by many reviewers.
Since the Aquamark benchmarks are based on a real gaming
environment, they must support old and new cards (and
therefore technologies) alike. Thus, Aquamark 3
utilizes not only DirectX 9 shaders, but DirectX 8 and 7
as well. We ran this at 1024x768x32 with no
anti-aliasing, then again with 4 samples enabled in the drivers. As if that
wasn't enough, we really went to stress the video cards
by running the same tests, but this time at 1600x1200.
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All three of
these cards are priced similarly, but the 5900XT pulls ahead
quite noticeably at both resolutions, making it a very attractive option at the
start.
In all tests, it led the other two cards by 15% or more.
The AA5700U slipped to the back of the pack at all
resolutions, with or without anti-aliasing samples. It
wasn't necessarily far behind the 9600XT, though, and in
most cases was only a frame per second or less slower.
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Benchmarks
With Halo |
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Finally on the PC, Where it Belongs |
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Although the release of
Halo marked the end of a long wait, since it was
originally released as an Xbox exclusive a few years
back, it hasn't fared too well on the PC. No additional
patches or tweaks are needed to use this game's built-in
benchmarking utility, however, as Gearbox has included
all of the information needed in their README file. The
benchmark runs through four of the cut scenes from the
game, after which the average frame rate is displayed.
We ran it twice, once at 1024x768 and again at
1280x1024. Anti-aliasing doesn't work properly with this
game at the moment, so all of the tests below were run
with anti-aliasing disabled. |
Again we see
the 5900XT at the fore-front, with the other two trailing
behind. In this case, the AA5700U has the very slight
advantage over the 9600XT, putting up an additional frame at
1024x768, but ending up almost equal at 1280x1024. So
far, the latter two cards seem to match up comparably both
features-wise and price-wise, and we have yet to see if one
will emerge from the other's shadow.
Unreal Tournament 2003 & Splinter Cell Testing
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