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The following benchmarks have been taken on my system. It's specifications are as follows:
Standard "stock" 300 Watt PSU
Abit KR7A-Raid Motherboard
Athlon XP 1700+ with Vantec cooler and Delta Fan.
512 Mb of Cas2 Crucial Ram,1T, 4-way interleave
Sound Blaster Live! Platinum (Not utilized in the tests at all)
Standard 10/100 Networking card.
The AGP Settings are as follows:
AGP Bandwidth: 128 Mb
AGP Speed: 4x
The BIOS settings are tweaked so that the AGP, RAM, and CPU are all tweaked for maximum performance.
The comparison model is a Gainward Geforce4 Ti4200. The MSI's memory clock was toned down to 500 Mhz so that a clear comparison could be made (default Ti4200 speeds are 500MHz memory). We will explore MSI's stock speeds (513MHz), as well as AntiAliasing.
All benchmarks will be run at 1024x768 and up. Q3 Engine @ High setting results will be displayed, and 3D Mark is left at default settings.
Quake 3 Arena
As we can see, the MSI beats out the Gainward in every test. The difference is marginal, barely noticeable. The Quake 3 benchmarks are almost otherwise neck to neck.
Return To Castle Wolfeinstein
Return To Castle Wolfeinstein is a heavily revised Quake 3 Arena engine which takes place in Nazi Germany. The engine itself is advanced, and will stress a video card to its limit.
Here we see the MSI and Gainward are once again neck to neck, short of a few scores.
3D Mark 2001SE
MadOnion's 3D Mark benchmarking program is celebrated as being one of the most popular ways of determining just how fast your video card and computer is overall.
Here we find once again, very similar scores. I think I'm starting to see a pattern.
Jedi Knight 2
Finally, we have Jedi Knight 2, which I have found to be very processor dependant. Since both configurations are using an Athlon 1700+, the scores should be within a few FPS.
What can we conclude from these benchmarks? Simple - when clocked at the standard 250 Mhz CPU / 500 Mhz Memory, the MSI performs just like other cards.
Too bad MSI overclocks by default, Gainward!
Let's see how the stock CPU Clock pairs up against the Gainward. Will the extra 13 Mhz really help out all that much?
Quake 3 Arena
We see quite a large increase in FPS - even though the 1600x1200 NORMAL configuration's FPS was higher for MSI before, the extra 13 Mhz gives it the extra umph to propel itself a good 17 FPS over the Gainward - even if that 17 FPS is at the CPU-Bound benchmark. In the cases where the video card itself was actually being maxed out, a great increase was shown.
Return To Castle Wolfeinstein
Here we find as before that the lower resolutions which do not max out the video card get a slight boost, whereas the higher resolutions and configurations get a larger boost.
Jedi Knight 2
The numbers are similar to those which were benched before with the 500 Mhz memory clock - approximately 1 FPS greater than the Gainward.
MadOnion's 3D Mark
We find that the extra 13 Mhz does in fact help, boosting the 1024x768 benchmark all the way up to 9800 3D Marks.
AntiAliasing Results
On MSI's Ti4200 with 2 sample anti-aliasing, we find that at the highest settings in Quake 3 Arena, the card is brought to it's knees, averaging 48.30 FPS - not shabby at all, but nothing compared to it's previous Non-anti-aliasing 100 FPS.
Quake 3 Arena
Return to Castle Wolfeinstein
Return to Castle Wolfeinstein on the other hand does not drop too significantly at lower resolutions - showing how the newer engines and games are dealing with Anti-Aliasing better.
At 4 sample anti-aliasing, the card holds it's own in comparison to its 2 sample anti-aliasing scores - only loosing about 2 FPS at the maximum configuration and resolution.
3D Mark gives us astounding results, 7818 3D Marks at 1024x768 with 2 sample anti-aliasing.
Now, surprisingly, we find that at 4 sample speed, the card performed almost just as well as when it was using 2 sample anti-aliasing.
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Next Page - Overclocking and Final Words
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