ATI Radeon 9800 XT: We take a look at ATI's flagship pixel pusher, and see where it fits in today's and tomorrow's market.
Date:
February 4, 2004
Manufacturer:
Written By:
Price:
Jedi Knight II
This has been a mainstay in our benchmark suite for quite a while, but its beginning to look long in the tooth. While the graphcs are very nice and the engine it uses is still very much used in the industry, the game itself is mostly CPU limited until 1600*1200 with AA and ansio on. So if anyone has a suggestion for a better OpenGL based game let us know. However lets look at the results from this game.
Video Card
Minimum FPS
Average FPS
Maximum FPS
MSI FX5900 Ultra Oc'd:
126
157.91
205
MSI FX5900 Ultra:
122
154.33
189
Radeon 9000 Pro AiW:
120
149.45
186
Radeon 9800XT:
127
149.08
192
Radeon 9800XT 459/385:
126
149.17
189
Matrox Parhelia:
114
136.77
164
The results here show that the CPU is limiting the performance of the video cards. It seems that nVidia still has slightly better drivers for this Quake III based game. Next and very close is the ATI cards and lastly is the Parhelia. Do the results spread out if we turn AA and ansio on?
Video Card
Minimum FPS
Average FPS
Maximum FPS
MSI FX5900 Ultra Oc'd:
124
152.58
187
MSI FX5900 Ultra:
106
149.36
192
Radeon 9000 Pro AiW:
25
33.2
42
Radeon 9800XT:
113
146.67
188
Radeon 9800XT 459/385:
117
146.85
180
Matrox Parhelia:
77
92.10
111
It does help us lose the weaker cards from the top results, however the 9800XT and the FX5900U are still bottlenecked by the CPU with the superior driver optimizations of the FX5900U giving it the lead here.
Video Card
Minimum FPS
Average FPS
Maximum FPS
MSI FX5900 Ultra Oc'd:
123
153.33
178
MSI FX5900 Ultra:
127
154.08
198
Radeon 9000 Pro AiW:
62
80.42
94
Radeon 9800XT:
119
148.38
181
Radeon 9800XT 459/385:
119
149.55
185
Matrox Parhelia:
64
75.96
89
All I can say is look at the comments for 1024*768 with AA and ansio and you get the same thing for this test. The bright spot is that all of the cards produce a playable frame rate in this test.
Video Card
Minimum FPS
Average FPS
Maximum FPS
MSI FX5900 Ultra Oc'd:
126
142.33
156
MSI FX5900 Ultra:
118
132.08
151
Radeon 9800XT:
104
121.47
142
Radeon 9800XT 459/385:
112
129.42
140
Matrox Parhelia:
36
43.96
59
Here we see a little bit of the CPU limitATIon begin to easy, with the Radeon losing about 20% of its frame rate here. The FX5900U loses very little in the way of performance, from 7-15%. However this is fairly moot as both cards are still very playable with even their minimum frame rates going above 100fps. So with this OpenGL test we see that nVidia and its drivers take the lead, how about in something a little more challenging, Serious Sam SE?
