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HotHardware's Test Setup |
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Mainstream Monster |
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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 chose Albatron's PX865PE Lite
Pro motherboard as the basis for our tests, as it would
cater to the mainstream or value-minded builder. We
started off by manually optimizing the BIOS settings to
the most aggressive system options available to us.
This meant that the memory frequency was manually set to
DDR400 with the CAS timings set to 2-5-2-2. Since
the Albatron PX865PE Lite motherboard came with a form of
memory enhancement, we opted to enable this as well.
Lastly, the AGP Aperture setting was set to 256MB.
Once the BIOS
options were set, the hard drive was formatted as a FAT32
partition, and Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 1
was installed. After the Windows installation completed,
we installed the latest Intel chipset drivers and upgraded
to DirectX 9.0b. We then installed the drivers for
the rest of the components, using drivers supplied on
Albatron's driver CD, except for the video cards.
For the Radeon 9600 XT, we installed the ATi Catalyst
drivers that were released simultaneously with the card,
which were version 3.8. For the GeForce FX 5600 and
5700 Ultra, we downloaded and installed the latest drivers
from NVIDIA, ForceWare version 52.16. Auto-Updating,
Hibernation, and System Restore were disabled, and then we
set up a 768MB permanent page file.
We set the
visual effects to "best performance" in system performance
to limit any effects these settings would have on the
benchmarks. Graphical settings in the display
control panels were set to the highest level, however,
since we wanted to stress these components the most.
Vertical Sync was disabled in OpenGL in the control
panels. Satisfied that every thing was set up correctly,
we installed all of the benchmarking software, defragged
the hard drive, and rebooted one last time.
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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 and 6 samples, and one
last time with 4 samples but with 8x Anisotropic
Filtering 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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Whereas this test was completely dominated by the Radeon
9600 XT in our last video card review, NVIDIA has turned the
tables on ATi, bettering the 9600 XT by four percent at
1024x768 with no AA enabled, and seven percent at 1600x1200.
Enabling 4XAA in the drivers brings the two cards more on
par with each other, the 5700 Ultra is slightly better at
lower resolutions and the Radeon 9600 XT at higher
resolutions. A weak point for the GeForce FX 5700
Ultra appears to be 6XAA, as it took the largest hit of any
of the cards, including the GeForce FX 5600. The
drop-off with the 5600 Ultra was not as pronounced,
resulting in a loss of 6 FPS, about a 40% difference, while
the 5700 fell a full 50%. The extra 128MB of RAM on
the 5600 Ultra came into full effect here, more capable of
handling the complex textures. The GeForce FX 5700
rebounds nicely, however, when we returned to 4XAA with
eight samples of Anisotropic Filtering. Even with all
of the optimizations that NVIDIA has been working on with
the latest drivers, the Radeon 9600 XT still took a sizeable
lead at 1024x768 with 4XAA + AF, and a smaller lead at
1600x1200, which still amounted to an almost 10% increase in
frame rates.
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Benchmarks
With
Halo |
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Halo
- Finally on the PC, Where it Belongs |
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For many gamers out
there, the release of Halo marks the end of a long wait,
since it was originally released as an Xbox exclusive a
few years back. No additional patches or tweaks
are needed to use this, as Gearbox has happily included
all of the information needed in their Readme files.
The benchmark runs through four of the cutscenes from
the game, after which the average frame rate is
displayed to the user. Since this is still new to
the labs, we ran it twice, once at 1024x768 and again at
1280x1024, which are resolutions that we feel most
players will be using for gaming. |
Antialiasing doesn't work
with Halo just yet, so we stuck with raw numbers at two
resolutions that many gamers will probably be using.
The GeForce FX 5700 Ultra and ATi Radeon 9600 XT are in a
virtual dead heat - less than half a frame per second
separated the two in each of the tests. The FX 5600
Ultra was left bringing up the rear, anywhere from 30-35%
behind. When one compares the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra
(475/900) and the ATi Radeon 9600 XT (500/600)
features-wise, it only makes sense that the two should put
up close numbers in tests like this.
Unreal Tournament 2003 & Splinter Cell Testing
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