Max Payne
This game combines a 'cheesy' storyline with very good quality DirectX 8 based graphics. This has created a good game to play, at least for a short amount of time. The demo we will be using is from the guys at 3D Center which provides a good indication of overall game performance. How well does this video card handle this Direct 3D game.
The results here almost mirror the results with Serious Sam at 1024 with AA and ansiotropic filtering enabled, apart from the fact that the frame rates are higher. The AiW 9000 does very well, with a substantial lead over both the MX 440 and the 8500LE. The 8500LE for the first time is not close to the frame rate of the AiW 9000 cards, rather it is over 25% lower in frame rate than the AiW 9000, and is even slower than the MX 440, and most of its average frame rate occurs between seconds 43-48 where the frame rate skyrockets to 130fps. The MX 440 does somewhat better than the 8500LE but still can't manage to reach 60fps. It too has a spike at those 5 seconds but doesn't go nearly as high instead going to about 110fps, which is only 2X the average frame rate of the card. The AiW 9000 performs about 12-16fps (26-32%) better than the MX 440 and is able to stay above 60fps as an average. The spike helps raise the frame rate but doesn't quite double the average frame rate during this short period. Overclocking again brings some gains, in this case 5fps or 8.7%, which helps bring the card within striking distance of the top three results. How about with AA and ansiotropic filtering enabled, how do the cards perform in this game?
There is a new leader in this test, the Matrox Parhelia with its more efficient AA technique. The ATi cards perform 'poorly', but that is to be expected as these are really just budget cards. The AiW 9000 is the fastest of the three 'budget' cards, and holds a 7fps (59%) lead over the highly stressed MX 440, though this card is just as GPU/memory limited as the MX 440, though it has a better rendering design than the MX 440. Overclocking the card leads to a 10% increase in performance, though that is only 2fps in total. The 8500LE is about halfway between the MX 440 and the AiW 9000. Overall it is a stretch to consider the performance of all but the Parhelia as playable, though an argument could be made for the GF4 Ti4600-8X cards. Does the performance picture look any better at 1600*1200, with these quality options disabled?
The results here are interesting, as we see what seems to be the top three spots taken up by the usual video cards. However as we look we see that the overclocked AiW 9000 is very close to the performance of the Parhelia, in fact it is really the same. The graphs for these two cards is fairly different, with the AiW 9000 making use of its spike at seconds 43-48 to bring it the level of the Parhelia, which doesn't have any such spike. Otherwise the non-overclocked AiW 9000 does well, having an advantage of 6fps (24%) over both the 8500LE and the MX 440. The graphs of the MX 440 and the AiW 9000 are similar with the same variation that is attributed to the 5 second spike. However the 8500LE almost triples its average frame rate value in those 5 seconds, which is interesting to say the least. In this test it seems that all but the 8500LE and the MX 440 should be at least basically playable at this resolution. We've seen the ATi cards best the MX in this test, how do they fair in the graphically demanding UT2003?
Next Page - UT 2003
Previous Page - Serious Sam SE
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ATI All-In-Wonder 9000 Pro: ATi has been making the AiW series for the last several years. Today's review will look at one of ATi's latest but not necessarily fastest All-in-Wonder video card.
