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Test Setup
Epox 8RDA+ nForce2: Athlon XP 2400+ provided by (15x133: 2.0GHz), 2 x 256MB Crucial PC2700 Ram, ATi All-In-Wonder VE, 120GB Western Digital SE 8MB Cache, Windows XP SP1, nForce 2 Unified Driver Package 2.0, ATi Catalyst 3.0
Benchmarks
In an ideal world, I'd run the VE against a 7500 All-In-Wonder, but we don't have any in the labs. We'll be running the AiW VE against itself. All benchmarks are at default settings, unless otherwise noted. I am not including any high quality benchmarks for a couple reasons. First off, they'll just end up scoring lower than the benchmarks being done today, but that is a given. Secondly, any serious gamer who does turn up the eye candy will probably opt for the higher end AiW 9700 Pro.
3D Mark 2001SE
I decided to start things off with a bit of nostalgia, and run the AiW VE through some 3DMark2k1. Truth is, the main reason I kept this benchmark around for one last hurrah is the fact that the GPU is a little long in tooth, so we may as well see where it stands.
Unreal Tournament 2003
Unlike the Futuremark benchmarks, UT2k3 is a real world benchmark that will give you a better representation of what kind of performance you can expect from a title available on store shelves now. We used the , and ran the Antalus and Inferno benchmarks at Low Quality mode. The higher quality modes did run, but results were omitted. If you really need to see graphs of single digit framerates, let me know…
Antalus - Low Quality
Inferno - Low Quality
Serious Sam 2: Second Encounter
Serious Sam was designed with very detailed graphics and still manages to test the capabilities of a video card. I do find some of the textures a bit blocky, but the game engine still stresses modern video cards pretty hard.
I don't think I need to say anything that isn't already obvious from the charts above. Simply put, the AiW VE does have some horsepower, but only when you compare it to the integrated video card market that ATi is targeting.
Quake 3: Arena
This benchmark is older than the GPU used for the VE itself, and although we're planning to retire it shortly, I've added it to test the AntiAliasing performance of the VE. There are two options available, Quality AA and Performance AA. Tests were done at 4xAA.
Quake 3: Arena - Performance 4xAA
Quake 3: Arena - Performance 4xAA
Naturally, quality AA takes a bigger hit than performance. It could be old age, but I found little difference in the quality, so if you do plan on playing with AA on, I'd go for performance. That being said, if you're going to go the AA route, you'll probably have to consider 800x600. Keep in mind that these benchmarks are averages, so realistically, expect severe framerate hits when playing on a loaded server.
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