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:
Max Payne 2
Max Payne 2: The fall of Max Payne is similar to the original game but offers some improved graphics while still sharing the same cheesy type storyline of the previous game. The quality of the graphics presented in this game do test the video card very much. Our test takes place on the last level of the game, which gives us a good amount of bodies to render, as well as fire and fog effects. Lets see how the 9800XT fairs against itself and the Matrox Parhelia in this test.
Video Card
Minimum Frame Rate
Average Frame Rate
Maximum Frame Rate
Radeon 9800XT:
47
78.77
155
Radeon 9800XT 459/385:
46
79.36
132
Matrox Parhelia:
21
40.14
96
Unfortunately we were not able to test the FX5900U in this test as we do not have it anymore, but look for more results to compare the 9800XT to in my next video card review. We can see from this result that overclocking doesn't make a difference at this setting as the difference between the two 9800XT clock speeds is less than 1%. However this is about twice the frame rate of the Parhelia, though as a note I played through the entire game on the Parhelia without issue at this setting.
Video Card
Minimum Frame Rate
Average Frame Rate
Maximum Frame Rate
Radeon 9800XT:
46
73.53
123
Radeon 9800XT 459/385:
46
75.97
156
Matrox Parhelia:
16
28.64
57
The gap widens between the Parhelia and the 9800XT. Now the Parhelia is over 2.5 times slower than the Radeon 9800XT when AA is turned on, even with the Parhelia's very efficient FAA being used. The 9800XT only loses 7% of its performance by turning AA and ansiotropic filtering on. Overclocking nets a 3% increase in frame rate, showing that the 9800XT is still somewhat CPU bound at 1024*768. What about if we turn up the resolution?
Video Card
Minimum Frame Rate
Average Frame Rate
Maximum Frame Rate
Radeon 9800XT:
38
61.70
124
Radeon 9800XT 459/385:
41
65.74
142
Matrox Parhelia:
10
22.33
52
We begin to see results similar to what we have seen with previous tests, with the 9800XT offering about three times the performance of the Parhelia. Otherwise the 9800XT gains a 6.5% increase from overclocking, which is around the 7% average increase we have seen so far. The 9800XT still offers over 60fps as an average even at this resolution, losing only 27% of its 1024*768 frame rate with the 2.5X increase in screen area. Now lets turn AA and ansio on to see the results.
Video Card
Minimum Frame Rate
Average Frame Rate
Maximum Frame Rate
Radeon 9800XT:
24
45.37
90
Radeon 9800XT 459/385:
29
48.71
100
Matrox Parhelia:
8
14.77
25
The results are different from what we saw when we enabled these features at 1024*768. The 9800XT loses about 35% of its frame rate when AA and ansio are turned on here. The just over 7% increase in frame rate gathered from overclocking is again evident in this test. Compared to the poor Parhelia we see that the 9800XT leaves it in its dust, outperforming it by about 300%. However these games we have looked at so far are all DirectX based, but what about all the Quake III (and its variants) fans, how does this card perform here?
