System Setup and 3D Marks
This content was originally featured on Amdmb.com and has been converted to PC Perspective’s website. Some color changes and flaws may appear.
AMD Athlon XP 1700+Alpha 8045 HSF
Epox 8KHA+ Motherboard
512 MB of PC2100 (2 X 256 MB Crucial)
60 gig Maxtor D740X 60GB UDMA133
Sparkle 400W ATX Power Supply
Iiyama 19″ monitor
Windows XP Pro
Detonators 23.12
DX 8.1
Via 4 in 1 Drivers 4.37v
PCI Latency patch
All three cards were tested on the same hardware with the same drivers and updates, I did a clean install of MS Windows XP Pro between each card and I used the following settings.
Vertical Sync is turned off.
Mipmap detail level to blend.
Antialiasing is turned off.
All other settings set to default.
I did the following benchmarks to demonstrate the performance in Direct 3D and Open GL.
3D Mark 2000 & 2001
Vulpine GL
GL Excess
Quake 3
Max Payne
I ran each of the benchmarks three times in every resolution and took an average, I also rebooted between each test; I did this to minimize any error.
3DMark®2000 is designed for DirectX®7. It tests all the latest updates in 3D gaming hardware and includes a bunch of mind-blowing demo scenes.
As normal with this benchmark the CPU is the limiting factor, this is because 3D Mark tests the system as a whole rather than just the video card, this can be demonstrated by looking at the higher resolutions; and as you can see the MSI Pro VTG and the reference card are neck and neck
3DMark®2001, the Gamers’ Benchmark, combines DirectX®8 support with breathtaking graphics, and continues to accurately provide benchmark results that empower you to make informed hardware assessments.
The above results are quite impressive and as I was expecting the two Ti500 cards to be within 75-100 points of each other, I was very suspicious by the scale of the difference. I went back and re-tested the reference card but the scores were about the same give or take 50 points.
