|
HOW WE
CONFIGURED THE TEST SYSTEM:
Due to the fact
that we have seen significant variations in benchmark scores
from one site to the next, we feel it is necessary to
explain exactly how we configured our test system before
running any benchmarks. We chose to test the Radeon 9600 Pro
on the nForce 2 based Asus A7N8X mainboard, with an Athlon
XP 3000+. The first thing we did when configuring this
system was enter the BIOS and configured the Memory to run
synchronously with the FSB at 166MHz. The CAS Latency
and other memory timings were set at 2-2-5-2. The hard
drive was then formatted, and Windows XP Professional with
SP1 was installed. After the Windows installation was
complete, we installed the nForce Chipset drivers and then
hit the Windows Update site to downloaded all of the
available updates, with the exception of the ones related to
Windows Messenger. Then we installed all of the necessary
drivers for the rest of our components, and disabled then
removed Windows Messenger from the system. Auto-Updating and
System Restore were also disabled, 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, defragged the hard drive and ran all
of the tests at our CPU's default clock speed. All of the
tests were run with ATi's and NVIDIA's drivers configured
for maximum visual quality. ATi's
"Quality" Antialiasing and anisotropic filtering methods
were employed throughout our testing, while the Performance
slider available on NVIDIA's "Performance and Quality"
driver tab was set to "Application". In the "4X AA +
Aniso" tests, we enabled 4X AA and 8X Anisotropic
filtering in both NVIDIA's and ATi's driver panels.
Now, it's time for our results...
 |
|
HotHardware's Test Setup |
|
A
Top-Of-The-Line Athlon Rig |
|
AMD Athlon XP
3000+ (333MHz FSB)
Asus A7N8X
Motherboard (nForce 2 Chipset with AGP 8X)
512MB Corsair
PC3500 Platinum DDR RAM C2
On-Board NIC
On-Board
Sound
Seagate 120GB
SATA HD
Silicon Image
SATA Controller
Lite-On 16X
DVD-ROM
Standard
Floppy Drive
Windows XP
Professional with SP1
DirectX 9.0a
NVIDIA nForce
Chipset Drivers v2.03
ATi Radeon
9600 Pro
ATi Radeon 9500 Pro
ATi Radeon 9700 Pro
ATi Catalyst
Drivers - Version 3.2
(Click
Here,
Here or
Here to see the Catalyst Driver panels. We've
covered them in a few previous articles.)
NVIDIA
GeForce 4 Ti4600
Detonator
Drivers - Version 43.45
 |
|
Performance Comparisons
With 3DMark2001 SE |
|
Synthetic DX8 Action |
|
For our first
batch of tests, we ran Futuremark's 3DMark2001 SE (Build
330) at the benchmark's default resolution of 1024x768 and
again at 1600x1200. 3DMark2001 uses the "MaxFX"
engine, from Remedy's very popular game Max Payne, to
simulate an actual in-game environment. If you've ever
looked at 3DMark2001's detailed results, you've seen that
this benchmark is broken up into groups of "High" and "Low"
quality tests. Some of these tests use DirectX 8 pixel
and vertex shaders. The final score is generated by
taking the results of the individual tests and adding them
together using this formula:
The 9600 Pro
performed admirably, but was outpaced by all of the other
cards we tested. However, with 4X AA enabled at
1024x768, the Radeon 9600 Pro did manage to surpass the
GeForce 4 Ti4600 by about 8.5%. That was the only
instance where the 9600 Pro eked out a victory in 3DMark2001
though. What do you say we move on to something a
little more demanding to see how she holds up?
3DMark03 and Comanche 4
|