Aquamark3, 3DMark
This content was originally featured on Amdmb.com and has been converted to PC Perspective’s website. Some color changes and flaws may appear.
Aquamark 3 |
Aquamark 3 has become one of the popular alternatives to 3DMark. This benchmark uses the Krass Engine which is used to power Massive Development’s Aquanox 2 game. The benchmark uses many DirectX 9 features and therefore is a good measurement of DX9 capabilities and comparing it to other similarly configured systems.
Benchmark
Configuration
|
|
Resolution | 1024×768 |
AA | None |
AF | 4x |
Asus
Radeon 9800XT
|
NVIDIA
FX5950 Ultra
|
Softmod
R9500
|
|
Score | 43374
|
42822
|
33235
|
Average FPS | 43.37
|
42.82
|
33.24
|
Min FPS | 12.60
|
15.28
|
8.47
|
Max FPS | 120
|
117
|
117
|
The Asus Radeon 9800XT does really well here in Aquamark. But even though it nets a score 1000 pts. higher than the FX5950 Ultra, the actual difference in frames per second appear minimal. Comparing the Average FPS, the FX5950 Ultra and the Asus R9800XT are essentially identical (less than 1 FPS apart). The 9800XT scores an average 10 FPS higher than the softmod Radeon 9500 which gives us an idea of the performance difference between the top-end Asus compared to mid-range ATI products.
Aquamark being a DirectX 9 benchmark, shows that the Asus Radeon 9800XT is comfortable running its features and should translate into good DX9 performance in games.
Futuremark 3DMark 03 v340 and 3DMark 2001SE |
Even though the relevance of this benchmark is debatable now that we are seeing a lot more DirectX 9 games being released, it remains a good method of comparing results between systems. 3DMark 03 uses a combination of DirectX 7, DirectX 8, and a small sampling of DirectX 9. Therefore it is a good indication on how it would perform in some older games of games that have a small quantity of DirectX 9 features.
Asus Radeon 9800XT |
NVIDIA
FX5950 Ultra
|
Softmod R9500 |
|
3DMark
Score
|
6276 |
5086
|
4429
|
GT1
– Wings of Fury (FPS)
|
193.97
|
190.44
|
162.90
|
GT2
– Battle of Proxycon (FPS)
|
44.85
|
34.75
|
28.65
|
GT3
– Troll’s Lair (FPS)
|
38.32
|
30.47
|
26.07
|
GT4
– Mother Nature (FPS)
|
36.13
|
25.22
|
24.64
|
Fill
Rate (Single-Texturing, MTexels/s)
|
1830.06
|
1509.95
|
1304.32
|
Fill
Rate (Multi-Texturing, MTexels/s)
|
2820.22
|
3311.82
|
1983.93
|
Vertex
Shader (FPS)
|
19.68
|
13.29
|
13.28
|
Pixel
Shader 2.0
|
52.36
|
51.03
|
37.36
|
Ragtroll
(FPS)
|
28.83
|
19.07
|
18.23
|
Here we can see the Asus pull ahead of NVIDIA’s reference card. In GT2-GT4 which uses more advanced shaders and DX8 and DX9 (compared to GT1), the Asus has a significant lead of about 10 FPS against the FX5950U. In fact, the Asus Radeon 9800XT/TVD beats the FX5950 Ultra in every test except for multi-textured fill-rate.
I have included 3DMark 2001SE results as a last-minute addition to this article. Someone had asked via email to post these results, so here they are! I won’t say much about them since those of you looking for these numbers know what to do with them. 🙂