Fall 2003 Video Card Roundup Part I - ATI's Radeon 9800 XT
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on October 1, 2003 3:02 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The New Test Suite
As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, we are introducing a brand new test suite with this review and we are also kicking off the first installment of a multipart series covering multiple aspects of current (and somewhat next) generation gaming performance.
By no means should you take the limited (yet extensive) tests we have here as all you will see from us, but rather something to whet your appetite for what is yet to come. The focus of this review is plain and simple – comparing the basic performance of the latest offerings from ATI and NVIDIA. In the future installments we will cover image quality, CPU scaling and other aspects of performance in greater detail. We will be making notes of noticeable visual differences between ATI and NVIDIA in this article, but a comparison with supporting images will be done in Part II of the series.
As far as the new test suite is concerned, here are the benchmarks that made it in:
AquaMark 3
Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour
F1 Challenge ’99-‘02
Final Fantasy XI Benchmark 2
Halo
Homeworld 2
Jedi Knight III: Jedi Academy
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004
Neverwinter Nights: The Shadows of the Undrentide
Simcity 4
Splinter Cell
Unreal Tournament 2003
X2
Warcraft III: Frozen Throne
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
We are working on expanding the suite even further, but for now this is what we have. If you’d like to see more games added please feel free to let us know either by sending an email or even better, leaving a comment through the system at the bottom of the page.
We used ATI’s publicly available Catalyst 3.7 drivers and in order to support the NV38 we used NVIDIA’s forthcoming 52.14 drivers. The 52.14 drivers apparently have issues in two games, neither of which are featured in our test suite (Half Life 2 & Gunmetal).
Our test bed was configured as follows:
2.8GHz Intel Processor Prescott
512MB DDR400
Intel 875P Motherboard
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Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
#92, for the 100,000,000 time in these comments, doom3 is not dx9.How can anyone take your post seriously when you state 'facts' that you just got from the top of your head. Read your post, read the facts and think about how stupid you look.
btw, great review Anand and to other whiners who keep harping on about IQ and Resolutions being low, it's part one as mentioned at start of review. Read the whole review and you won't look so silly LMAO
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
I want 1600 x 1400 with max aa/af!!!!!!!!!!!!Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Great group of games, though I'm surprised you have time to run so many tests. Hopefully you won't get overwhelmed and have to cut it back down.Nitpicky bit, but some corrections to the titles of your games:
- Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide
- Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
Did you get an early copy of Halo? Man you guys get all the good stuff :)
Link - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
BAD,BAD,BAD review.Why did you choose to use only 2.8Ghz? It's THE limiting factor that is preventing XT from showing its full capability.
I'd bluntly say this review(er) is favoring FX by not using higer clocked cpu and beta driver for FX.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
How long have those underlined, highlighted words that look like links been ads here? That is one lame form of advertising... very annoying...Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
That invisible Prescott thing is crazy! Why the hell would they do that?Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Are these even DX9 games? If not, who cares.Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
PLEASE add Morrowind to test suite!!!Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Sorry I don't have time to read through all the posts, so please forgive me if it's been mentioned above.It should be noted that due to a bug with ATI and Halo, ATI cards using Catalyst 3.7 drivers DO NOT USE Shader 2.0, currently only nVidia cards (that are capable) use 2.0
In the .txt output file, it clearly shows ATI using 1.4 shader, while nVidia (5900) uses 2.0 This is supposed to be fixed in next driver release and/or patch from Halo.
Supposedly you can force the ATI cards to run in 2.0 but adding a -use20 in the shortcut properties.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Yes. So he's benchmarking unreleased hardware (NV38) with unreleased drivers (52.xx) on an unreleased cpu (Prescott).