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HOW WE
CONFIGURED THE TEST SYSTEM:
We chose to test the
Leadtek WinFast A300 Ultra TD MyVIVO
on the NVIDIA nForce 2 based Asus A7N8X mainboard, powered
by an Athlon
XP 3000+. The first thing we did when configuring this
test system was enter the BIOS and set the Memory to run
synchronously with the FSB at 166MHz. The CAS Latency
and other memory timings were set at 2-2-5-2. The hard
drive was then formatted, and Windows XP Professional with
SP1 was installed. After the Windows installation was
complete, we installed the nForce Chipset drivers and then
hit the Windows Update site and downloaded all of the
available updates, with the exception of the ones related to
Windows Messenger. Then we installed all of the necessary
drivers for the rest of our components, then disabled and
removed Windows Messenger from the system. Auto-Updating and
System Restore were disabled as well, and a 768MB permanent
page file was created. Lastly, we set Windows XP's Visual
Effects to "best performance", installed all of the
benchmarking software, defragged the hard drive and ran all
of the tests at our CPU's default clock speed. All of the
tests were run with ATi's and NVIDIA's drivers configured
for maximum visual quality. ATi's
"Quality" Antialiasing and Anisotropic filtering
methods were employed throughout our testing, while the
Performance slider available on NVIDIA's "Performance and
Quality" driver tab was set to "Application". For the "4X AA + Aniso" tests
listed in our graphs, we enabled 4X AA and 8X Anisotropic
filtering in both NVIDIA's and ATi's driver panels.
Now, it's time for our results...
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HotHardware's Test Setup |
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A
Top-Of-The-Line Athlon Rig |
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AMD Athlon XP
3000+ (333MHz FSB)
Asus A7N8X
Motherboard (nForce 2 Chipset with AGP 8X)
512MB Corsair
PC3500 Platinum DDR RAM C2
On-Board NIC
On-Board
Sound
Seagate 120GB
SATA HD
Silicon Image
SATA Controller
Lite-On 16X
DVD-ROM
Standard
Floppy Drive
Windows XP
Professional with SP1
DirectX 9.0a
NVIDIA nForce
Chipset Drivers v2.03
ATi Radeon 9700 Pro
ATi Radeon 9800 Pro
ATi Catalyst
Drivers - Version 3.2
NVIDIA
GeForce 4 Ti4600
WinFast A300
Ultra TD MyVIVO
Detonator
Drivers - Version 43.45
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Performance Comparisons
With 3DMark2001 SE |
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Synthetic DX8 Action |
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We ran Futuremark's 3DMark2001 SE (Build
330) at the benchmark's default resolution of 1024x768 and
again at 1600x1200, for our first batch of tests. To
simulate an actual in-game environment, 3DMark2001 uses the
DX8 class "MaxFX"
engine from Remedy's very popular game Max Payne. 3DMark2001's
overall score is calculated using the results from two
groups of "High" and "Low" quality tests. The final score is generated by
taking the results of these individual tests and adding them
together using this formula:
There is no denying the GeForce
FX 5800 Ultra chipset powering the Leadtek card is
fast, at least according to 3DMark2001...it's just not quite as fast as ATi's current flagship.
At 1024x768, with and without Antialiasing enabled, the A300
Ultra edged out the Radeon 9700 Pro, but the Radeon 9800 Pro
was a little too much for it to handle, besting the FX by
about 7%. At 1600x1200 without AA the A300 came in
slightly ahead of the 9700 Pro, but once AA was enabled both
of the high-end Radeons surged ahead. The 128-bit
memory bus on the FX 5800 Ultra definitely hurts the A300
here...
3DMark03 and Comanche 4
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