Next, its 3DMark 2001SE from MadOnion (Build 300). This benchmark performs a series of tests in DirectX to stress the card in differing ways, and then compiles an overall score you can compare with others online.

Geforce 2 GTS (no FSAA)
1024*768 3829
1200*1024 3453
1600*1200 2491

Geforce 4 Ti4600 (no FSAA)
1024*768 8652
1200*1024 7450
1600*1200 6395

Geforce 4 Ti4600 (2x FSAA)
1024*768 7294
1200*1024 5732
1600*1200 4228

Geforce 4 Ti4600 (4x FSAA)
1024*768 5609
1200*1024 3500
1600*1200 2238

This card just blew away the GeForce 2 GTS, even with 4x FSAA. The results speak for themselves here. I can remember watching the polygon count 8 lights part with the dragons on the merry go round on my GeForce 2 at about 1 fps, when I first bought it. It was a total slideshow affair and made me wonder if there was something wrong with my card till I realised it was just THAT intensive a test. Watching it with the GeForce 4 is entirely different. The frame rate is still low, but it's actually viewable as moving imagery.

Overclocking and FSAA

Ok let's take a look at the overclocking potential of this card. I ramped up the settings and the best overclock that I could get from the card was a very sweet 318/735. Higher than that and the screen had some spots here and there. I ran 3dmark at 318/738 but the spots gave me a headache and it crashed half way through the nature demo, stuttering every few seconds for as much of it as it did run. Have to point out here, I tried the card at higher settings in the course of testing how far I could go. When it got to far the PC crashed and upon reboot, the card was reset back to "safe mode" standard settings by Expert Tool. Very nice.

Damn fine overclock, although it didn't have any effect on my benchmark results, not even a 1% increase. I get the feeling the card wants to give me more even at enhanced settings but is being held back by the rest of the system (time to upgrade!) and my testing results would seem to confirm this. Just to add, if I overclocked any higher than Expert Tool's "Enhanced" settings, WinDVD would corrupt the Windows desktop with hardware motion compensation enabled. Everything else ran fine as per the above results, it was just WinDVD. Not to much of a worry really, one click of the button and it can be set it to "Enhanced" or even "Safe Mode" for DVD playback. I'm impressed and happy with the card's abilities for my own personal use as it should scale very nicely with an upgrade, plus the FSAA is fantastic. I'm a big fan of Quake III Arena and Jedi Knight II: Outcast and the difference it has made to the image quality is great. Here's a few screenshots to try and explain what I mean.

No FSAA

2x FSAA

4x FSAA

If you look at the curves in the pictures you'll notice a gradual lessening of the "jaggies" from image 1-3. The same goes for the vertical corner wall on the left hand side towards the back. Now a screenshot doesn't really do this justice, as the card is doing this with moving images and there's no noticeable variance during movement. It's the kind of thing you really notice once you go back to no FSAA (which I never will if I can help it!). All of the curves just look more "real"; more like curves than multiple lines going together to make a curve. Great stuff, and the fact that as you can see from the benchmarks it doesn't have a big impact on frame rates is awesome. There are other forms of anti-aliasing, like 4XS and Quincunx. 4XS only runs under DirectX and Quincunx blurs the image to much to be worthwhile so I've stuck with testing and using the forms that I believe most people will use.

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