Serious Sam SE
Serious Sam offers two things, beautifully rendered graphics as well as lots of enemies. It is a very nice game to use as a benchmark, so without further ado lets look at the results.
| Video Card |
Minimum FPS |
Average FPS |
Maximum FPS |
| MSI FX5900 Ultra Oc'd: |
68 |
147.95 |
256 |
| MSI FX5900 Ultra: |
71 |
144.94 |
263 |
| Radeon 9800XT: |
73 |
146.44 |
271 |
| Radeon 9800XT 459/385: |
72 |
145.10 |
268 |
| Radeon 9000 Pro AiW: |
65 |
101.55 |
173 |
| Matrox Parhelia: |
42 |
75.27 |
159 |
We see from these results a similar result as we saw at 1600*1200 in Jedi Knight II. Both of the two high end cards are CPU limited and perform very close trading leads. The 9800XT "leads" at stock speeds, while the FX5900U "leads" when overclocked. Overall there is little improvement to be seen by overclocking, on the order of 1%(9800XT) to 2% (FX5900U). Lets see if this gap widens with AA and ansiotropic filtering enabled
| Video Card |
Minimum FPS |
Average FPS |
Maximum FPS |
| MSI FX5900 Ultra Oc'd: |
72 |
141.75 |
247 |
| MSI FX5900 Ultra: |
69 |
136.88 |
231 |
| Radeon 9800XT: |
70 |
133.33 |
226 |
| Radeon 9800XT 459/385: |
71 |
137.74 |
248 |
| Radeon 9000 Pro AiW: |
9 |
23.02 |
33 |
| Matrox Parhelia: |
32 |
51.52 |
108 |
Not much changes here, except that the two high end cards lose about 5-10fps with these features turned on. The interesting thing is that the Radeon 9000 Pro loses quite a bit of performance, plummeting from very playable to unplayable. Overclocking on both cards nets a small 3-3.5% increase in frame rate.
| Video Card |
Minimum FPS |
Average FPS |
Maximum FPS |
| MSI FX5900 Ultra Oc'd: |
66 |
118.44 |
199 |
| MSI FX5900 Ultra: |
67 |
110.80 |
181 |
| Radeon 9800XT: |
65 |
122.61 |
214 |
| Radeon 9800XT 459/385: |
66 |
125.14 |
224 |
| Radeon 9000 Pro AiW: |
26 |
45.58 |
70 |
| Matrox Parhelia: |
26 |
39.08 |
75 |
Here is the first time we see that the 9800XT beats the FX5900U in an OpenGL test by a fair amount. It has a 5-10% increase in frame rate compared to the FX5900U card, giving it from 7-10fps extra in this test. Again both cards are very playable as they both have minimum frame rates above 60fps, while the other two cards aren't able to make it to 50fps in this case.
| Video Card |
Minimum FPS |
Average FPS |
Maximum FPS |
| MSI FX5900 Ultra Oc'd: |
65 |
98.04 |
158 |
| MSI FX5900 Ultra: |
61 |
88.62 |
138 |
| Radeon 9800XT: |
49 |
70.14 |
127 |
| Radeon 9800XT 459/385: |
54 |
76.26 |
126 |
| Matrox Parhelia: |
17 |
26.84 |
55 |
This is back to the 1024*768 results, as the FX5900U takes a definite lead here, by 26-28%. The Radeon 9800XT is still playable at this setting but is close to the 60fps mark, with its minimum frame rate dipping below 55fps here. However this is still good enough to provide almost 3X the performance of the Parhelia.
Conclusion
Now after looking at all those results what can we conclude about this card? Is it the card that you need to go out and buy right now? Lets look at a brief overview of what we have covered.
The packaging of this card is pretty standard ATI fair, with all you need included from SVHS-RCA converters to the software that includes Multimedia Center and a coupon for a free Half Life 2 game. The card's design is somewhat different than different ATI cards, and has much in common with the MSI FX5900U that we reviewed previously, with the large heatsink that is actually very quiet, as well as the red PCB. The one thing I don't like about many of these newer cards is that they need a extra power connector to be added to them to run properly.
The drivers are standard ATI fair, which is good and getting better. An odd but interesting addition is the SmartShader effects, such as Sepia (Classic), ASCII Green (for you Matrix lovers), and others, which if nothing else offer a good laugh when you see a game such as UT2003 in Sepia. ATI has finally put a thermal probe somewhere in their card but doesn't offer a built-in temperature monitor. My suggestion to both ATI and nVidia is to have this integrated in one of the best temperature monitoring programs out there, Motherboard Monitor. OverDrive is another automatic overclocker, which does just that overclocks the card a little bit.
The quality of the image displayed by this card was both good and bad. The 2D quality was very good, close to that of our leader the Matrox Parhelia, and is one very nice point ATI has going for it. The quality of the 3D image was also very nice, as ATI seems to have improved their ansiotropic filtering method to allow it to filter more of the screen. However the TV-Out quality of this card leaves quite a bit to be desired, especially from a company that produces multimedia video cards designed to be a TV or output to one.
Performance of this card is a mixed bag, with the best example of the results being shown in the Spec results, as the 9800XT and the FX5900U trade top spot equally, with three wins apiece. In DirectX we see the FX5900U with a lead in X2 and the 9800XT with the lead in Splinter Cell. The cards then were very close with the UT2003 results with the 9800XT winning one and tying two other tests. OpenGL tests were also close as the FX5900U lead in three of the eight tests with the 9800XT leading in one of those tests. Overall a close result with no real speed victor here.
Lastly is the price of this card. At just about $400 US for this card This seems to be a little steep as the comparable MSI nBox is about the same price. The nBox which was the comparison card offers video in as well as three slightly older games that are still very nice today. The ATI card offers better 2D quality as well as a coupon for an as yet unreleased game in Half Life 2. Overall it depends on what you want in a card as both offer very good performance with slightly different bundles.
Good Points
- Very Fast
- Very good 2D quality
- Half Life 2 coupon
- Quiet
- Can see GPU temperature
Bad Points
- Fairly expensive
- Not the Greatest Overclocker
- Poor TV-Out
- No Temperature Monitor in drivers
Final Words
This card is fast, there are no doubts about that, and it has very nice 2D&3D quality. But it is somewhat expensive, as you are paying for the bleeding edge, and ATI really needs to work on the quality of its TV-Out before it is going to be an editors choice.
If you have any comments, be sure to look us up in our forums.
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