ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 and NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5650: Taking on DX9
by Andrew Ku on September 14, 2003 11:04 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
AquaMark 3
From the developers of Massive, we have AquaMark 3 to show and tell. This is another highly anticipated DX9 benchmark title that is based on the krass-engine, which was used in their previous AquaNox titles.For the purpose of our review, we turned the highest settings on (including 4xAA and 8xAF) and ran the resolution at 1280x1024 throughout. There are nine different chapters to AquaMark 3, which test everything from the particle system (particle upon particle texture build) to the terrain system (aquatic plants and the like as you pass over the bottom of the ocean floor). According to the faq, "AquaMark 3 approximately generates 30% of it's screen pixels (without overdraw) through ps2.0." The detail is quite impressive and can be visually seen in the bubbles of the water that are shown, as well as the light reflectivity in the bubbles of water. However, the detail is still shy of what we saw in Half-Life 2. There are explosions related to tanks and underwater craft firing projectiles, and the explosions are smoother than what we have seen many in DX8 titles. Time permitting later, we will explain this in more detail, so stayed tuned.
The scores that we achieved in AquaMark 3 are similarly reminiscent of our scores in Half-Life 2 but without such large margins. In AquaMark 3, the GeForce FX Go5650 achieves sub 10 fps scores in all but one of the scenarios. Meanwhile, the Mobility Radeon 9600 on the average is situated in the mid teens. Minimally, though, the Mobility Radeon 9600 shows its clear lead over the GeForce FX Go5650 with a 58% lead. At its best, the Mobility Radeon 9600 doubles the margin between its counterpart, and this just reinforces the GeForce FX Go5650’s trouble in true DX9 benchmarks.
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Anonymous User - Monday, September 15, 2003 - link
That 30 FPS-eye-limit rubbish always comes up in these sort of threads - I can't believe there are people who think they can't tell the difference between a game running at 30 FPS and 60 FPS.Anyway, I'd like to ask about the HL2 benches - you mention the 5600 is supposed to drop down a code path, but don't specifically say which one was used in the tests. DX8? Mixed? The charts say "DX 9.0", so if that was indeed used then it's interesting from a theoretical point of view but doesn't actually tell us how the game will run on such a system, since the DX8 code path is recommmended by Valve for the 5200/5600.
Anonymous User - Monday, September 15, 2003 - link
The "car wheels not rotating right" effect is caused by aliasing, and you'll still get that effect even if your video card is running at 2000fps.Besides, you're limited by your monitor's refresh rate anyhow.
Anonymous User - Monday, September 15, 2003 - link
#14 that is incorrect and totally misleading. Humans can tell the difference up to about 60fps (sometimes a little more).Have you ever seen a movie where the car's tires dont seem to rotate right? Thats becuse at 29.97fps you notice things like that.
Anonymous User - Monday, September 15, 2003 - link
#13, unless your not human, the human eye cant see a difference at 30fps and up. 60fps is a goal for users cause at that point, even if there is a slow down to 30fps you cant see the difference.Anonymous User - Monday, September 15, 2003 - link
Overall, I liked the article...However, whilst I understand that you wanted to run everything at maximum detail to show how much faster one chipset may be than another, it would have been helpful if some lower resolution benchmarks could have been thrown in.
After all, what good does it do you to know that chip B may perform at 30fps whilst chip A performs at 10fps if both are unplayable?
I don't mind whether I can play a game at an astoundingly good detail level or not - I care more about whether I can play the game at all! :)
In the end, we'd all love to be able to play all our games in glorious mega-detail looks-better-than-real-life mode at 2000fps, but it's not always possible.
A big question should be can I play the game at a reasonable speed with a merely acceptable quality. And that's the sort of information that helps us poor consumers! :)
Thanks for your time and a great article.
Sxotty - Monday, September 15, 2003 - link
Um do you mean floating point (FP16) or 16bit color? As opposed to FP32 on the NV hardware, as ATI's doesn't even support FP32, which is not 32bit color. ATI supports FP24. LOL and the no fog thing was just funny, that is NV's fault it is not like it has to be dropped they did it to gain a tiny fraction of performance.rqle - Monday, September 15, 2003 - link
I really like this comment:"Don’t forget that programmers are also artists, and on a separate level, it is frustrating for them to see their hard work go to waste, as those high level settings get turned off."
Hope future article on graphic card/chipset will offer more insight on how the may developer feel.
Anonymous User - Monday, September 15, 2003 - link
please note: the warcraft benchmark was done under direct3d. now nvidia cards perform badly under direct 3d with warcraft whereas ati does a very fine job. it's a completely different story, however, if u start warcraft 3 with the warcraft.exe -opengl command. so please take note of that, only very few people about this anyway. my quadro 4 700 go gl gets about +10fps more under opgengl compared to d3d!Pete - Monday, September 15, 2003 - link
Nice read. Actually, IIRC, UT2003 is DX7, with some DX7 shaders rewritten in DX8 for minimal performance gains. Thus, HL2 should be not only the first great DX9 benchmark, but also a nice DX8(.1) benchmark as well.Anonymous User - Monday, September 15, 2003 - link
so valve let you guys test out half life 2 on some laptops eh? very nice. (great review to, well written)