|
Our test system
was comprised of a single i845 test bed with a Pentium 4
1.8GHz Northwood processor. Details are listed here.
 |
|
Hot Hardware's Test System |
|
Intel Inside?
You betcha... |
|
Common Hardware:
Transcend ABR4 (i845 DDR) S478 Pentium 4 Motherboard
Intel Pentium 4 1.8 GHz. Northwood
256MB of IBM DDR SDRAM
Western Digital 20GB ATA100 7200rpm Hard Drive
On-board PC-97 Sound
Windows XP Professional with Direct X 8.1
Video Cards:
Chaintech GeForce 4 Titanium 4600 (128MB DDR)
Visiontek GeForce 3 Titanium 500 (64MB DDR)
Apollo ATI Radeon 8500LE (128MB DDR)
Drivers:
NVIDIA Detonator 4 Reference drivers, ver. 28.32
ATI Reference Drivers, ver. 7.67
 |
|
Head-to-Head / Performance Progression Versus The
Competition |
|
Quake 3 Arena |
|
|
First up was the venerable Quake
3 Arena, which is the time-honored test for benchmarking
video cards. While it doesnt seem to tax modern cards as
much as it used to, it still offers up some interesting
comparisons. We set all in-game video settings to the
maximum, "High Quality" settings, and then chugged us some numbers.
As you
can see, the GeForce 4 took some names and then kicked some
butt! At higher resolutions, the differences in framerates
were between 30-60 frames in comparison to the other two
cards. The only real eyebrow-raiser was when
using Anisotropic filtering. In these tests, the
Radeon performed well, while the GF4 faltered a bit. You'll see these graphs at the bottom of the
page.
Anti-Aliasing
Tests:
The Anti-Aliasing tests followed
suit, showing us the same relative differences in
framerate. Using 4xAA, you get the best graphical quality,
but we saw a major performance hit across the board. While the GF3 and
the Radeon wouldn't even support 4xAA at 1600x1200, the
Chaintech GF4 still sported a somewhat healthy 41.5 fps.
Anisotropic
Filtering:
The only real eyebrow-raiser
here was when using Anisotropic Filtering. In these tests,
the Radeon performed like a champ, while the GF4 received a
standing 8 count! In fact, the scores here were almost opposite
what we saw in the earlier tests, with the Radeon outpacing
the GF4 by 30-50 frames per test. We feel we should mention that ATi and NVIDIA do Anisotropic filtering
differently though. What NVIDIA calls 32-Tap Anisotropic filtering
(4X in their drivers) is not what ATi calls 32-Tap
Anisotropic filtering (8X in their drivers). With all
things considered, NVIDIA's filtering quality does looks
better. Also, keep in mind the Radeon can't do true trilinear filtering
when Anisotropic filtering is enabled.
For a decent explanation of how each of these cards does
Anisotropic filtering, check out this link from Rivastation.
Serious Sam and Comanche 4 |