HOW WE
CONFIGURED THE TEST SYSTEM:
The first thing
we did when configuring this test system was enter the
system BIOS and set the Memory to run synchronously with the
FSB at 166MHz. The CAS Latency and other memory
timings were set at 5-2-2-2. The hard drive was then
formatted, and Windows XP Professional with SP1 was
installed. Next we installed the nForce 2 chipset
drivers followed by all of the necessary drivers for the
rest of our components. We then disabled Windows
Messenger, Auto-Updating, and System Restore and set a 768MB
permanent page file. Lastly, we set Windows XP's
Visual Effects to "best performance", installed all of the
benchmarking software and ran all of the tests at our CPU's
default clock speed.
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HotHardware's Test Setup |
Bring It On! |
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AMD Athlon XP
2500+ (333MHz FSB)
Asus A7N8X
Deluxe Motherboard Rev. 1.3 (nForce 2 Chipset with AGP 8X)
512MB GEIL
PC3500 Platinum DDR RAM C2
On-Board NIC
On-Board
Sound
Western
Digital 30GB ATA100 HD
Creative 52X
CD-ROM
Standard
Floppy Drive
Windows XP
Professional with SP1
DirectX 9.0a
NVIDIA nForce
Chipset Drivers v2.03
ATi Radeon 9800 Pro
128MB DDR
ATi Catalyst
Drivers - Version 3.4
NVIDIA
GeForce FX 5800 Ultra 128MB DDR2
Detonator
Drivers - Version 44.03
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Gaming
Performance
with Unreal Tournament 2003 |
Let's Get Fragging! |
|
To get a true
assessment of a video card's performance, using tests that
best simulate a real world environment is best. While
synthetic tests may give us an idea how a card performs, there
is nothing more easily understood than simple "Frames Per
Second". To get things started, we loaded one of our
favorite DirectX benchmarks, Unreal Tournament 2003.
The tests were run at 1024x768 and 1600x1200 resolutions.
At the default
driver settings the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra and the VisonTek
Xtasy 9800 Pro 128MB turned out very similar results.
As we increased the visual quality through the drivers, we
saw the 9800 Pro take a smaller performance hit than the
FX 5800, but both cards did perform quite well.
Interestingly, when we increased
the resolution, the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra took a solid 18FPS
lead over the 9800 Pro with no Anti-Aliasing or Anisotropic
Filtering enabled. However, once AA and Aniso
were enabled, the GeForce card had a harder time maintaining
playable frame rates. The Xtasy 9800 Pro never dropped
below the 60FPS threshold, the frame rate often considered
the minimum to deem a game playable.
More DirectX
Testing |