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Test Setup
FIC AU13
Athlon XP 1700+ @ 2500 Mhz
2x OCZ Rev 3.2 PC2700 @ 400 MHz CL 2-3-3-6
Maxtor 40GB ATA133 HDD
Windows XP w/SP1
Test Software:
3D Mark 2001SE
Code Creatures
Unreal Tournament 2003
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
We will be using the ATI Catalyst 3.7, 3.5 and Omega Radeon drivers based on the Catalyst 3.6 drivers for all of our testing. Due to the amount of time it took to benchmark each driver, I only had time to benchmark using minimal setting variances. 3.8 was left out due to the issues with heat and performance loss by some users. We'll try to follow up on this as we learn more. The Rage3D Tweak was also used to squeeze a bit more performance where applicable.
Benchmark 1: 3DMark 2001 @ 1024x768 (Default Settings)
Oddly enough, the Omega drivers performance was increased when using the Rage 3D tweak, which indicates that certain registry settings may have been altered that decreased image quality in favor of performance. Let's look at overclocked results.
Benchmark 2: 3DMark 2001 @ 1024x768 (Default Settings) Overclocked to 405/353
Benchmark 3: Codecreatures @ 1024x768 (Default Settings)
Benchmark 4: Codecreatures @ 1024x768 (Defualt Settings) Overclocked to 405/353
The overclocked scores are quite impressive, especially when using the Rage 3D tweaking program under 3DMark 2001SE. This goes to show that a simple registry tweak can help or ruin the performance of a video card. Both Code Creatures and 3DMark 2001SE are synthetic benchmarks. Code Creatures did not seem to be affected very much by overclocking, although marginal increases were seen.
Next we will use some game benchmarks to gauge real life performance, which is what matters most when it comes to making a wise purchasing decision of a video card.
Benchmark 5: UT 2003 Antalus @ 1024x768
I was surprised to see little variance between the different driver sets, although the scores we see here are quite impressive.
Benchmark 6: UT 2003 Antalus @ 1024x768 (Defualt Settings) Overclocked to 405/353
Overclocking seemed to improve our scores quite a bit. Image quality was incredible with Omega's driver set, by the way.
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