The ATi Radeon 9800 Pro Full Release Review
ATi Technologies Distances Itself From NVIDIA Once Again

By, Dave Altavilla
March 5, 2003

 

Riddle with controversy, we're including both versions of Futuremark's 3DMark series for your edification here.  We feel that 3DMark 2003 is a solid "synthetic" benchmark, that has a place in our suite of tests, as part of the total picture in performance, along with real gaming benchmarks.  However, for 3DMark 2003, we are going to give you the full detail, in frames per second, from the testing results.

Benchmarks / Comparison With The Radeon 9800 Pro
GeForce FX,  a No-Show

 

 

 

Blowing past the 16K 3DMark barrier in 3DMark 2001 at 1024X768, the Radeon 9800 Pro doesn't even break a sweat here, coming close to the 15K mark, even at 1280X1024 resolution.

 

 

With 4X AA enabled we see more of the same, except the Radeon 9800 Pro starts to distance itself even further from the Radeon 9700 Pro and GF4 Ti 4600.  Without 4X AA enabled, the 9800 Pro is 5 to 15% faster than the 9700 Pro.  However, enable high res and 4X AA and the gap widens to a 17.5% for the R9800 Pro.

 

Sporting a combination of DX8 and DX9 feature testing, we have the details from our 3DMark 2003 runs at 1024X768 resolution.  We've taken two samplings here, one with no AA or Aniso Filtering turned on and one with 4X AA and 8X Aniso enabled.


     

The Radeon 9800 Pro here is no joke, with a commanding 16 to 20% lead over the Radeon 9700 Pro.  The GeForce 4 Ti 4600 simply need not apply to this benchmark.  It is in another league altogether really.  A GeForce FX 5800 Ultra would handle things much better here but we've been down that path.  For now, it's a dead end.

 

Benchmarks! - AquaMark and Comanche 4