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HOW WE
CONFIGURED THE TEST SYSTEM:
We tested the MSI GeForce FX5900XT-VTD128 on an i875P based MSI
875P Neo-FIS2R motherboard, powered by an Intel Pentium 4
3.2CGHz CPU. The first thing we did when configuring this
test system was enter the BIOS and loaded the "High
Performance Defaults". Then we set the memory to operate at
200MHz in dual-channel mode, with the CAS Latency and other
memory timings set by the SPD, and then we set the AGP aperture size
to 256MB. The hard drive was then formatted, and Windows XP
Professional with SP1 was installed. When the installation
was complete, we installed the Intel chipset drivers and
hit the Windows Update site to download and install all
of the available updates. Then we installed all of the
necessary drivers for the rest of our components and removed Windows
Messenger from the system. Auto-Updating, System Restore and Drive Indexing were then
disabled, the hard drive was de-fragmented and a
768MB permanent page file was created. Lastly, we set
Windows XP's Visual Effects to "best performance", installed
the benchmarking software and ran all of the tests.
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HotHardware's Test Setup |
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Intel
Powered - 3.2GHz System |
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Hardware:
Processor -
Mainboard -
Video Cards -
Memory -
Audio -
Hard Drive -
Optical Drive -
Other -
Software:
Operating System -
Chipset Drivers -
DirectX -
Video Drivers - |
Intel Pentium 4
3.2GHz
MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R
i875P "Canterwood" Chipset
MSI GeForce FX5900XT-VTD128
ATi Radeon 9600 XT
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra
1024MB Kingston HyperX PC3500
CAS 2
Integrated SoundMax Audio
Western Digital "Raptor"
36GB - 10,000RPM - SATA
Lite-On 16X DVD-ROM
3.5" Floppy Drive
Windows XP Professional SP1 (Fully
Patched)
Intel INF v5.1.1.1002
DirectX 9.0b
ATI
Catalyst v4.3
NVIDIA Forceware v56.56 |
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|
Performance Comparisons
With AquaMark3 |
|
DX8
and DX9 Shader Ops |
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|
Aquamark
3 |
Aquamark 3 comes to us by way of
Massive Development.
Massive's release of the original Aquanox in 1999 wasn't
well received, but it was one of the first games to
implement DX8 shaders, which led to the creation of
Aquamark 2 - a benchmark previously used by many analysts.
Since the Aquamark benchmarks are based on an actual
game engine, they must support old and new video cards
alike. Thus, Aquamark 3 utilizes not only DirectX 9
shaders, but DirectX 8 and DirectX 7 as well. We ran
this benchmark at resolutions of 1024x768 and 1600x1200
with no anti-aliasing, then again with 4x.
Throughout all of these tests, 4X Anisotropic filtering
was enabled from within Aquamark 3's control panel,
which is the default setting for this benchmark. |
Throughout this review, we'll be
comparing the performance of the MSI GeForce FX5900XT-VTD128
to an ATi Radeon 9600 XT and a GeForce FX 5700 Ultra, all
three of which can be found for well under the $200 mark.
In the Aquamark 3 tests, the MSI 5900 XT had a clear
advantage over the Radeon and 5700 Ultra, at both
resolutions. At 1024x768 without any anti-aliasing,
the MSI card outpaced its nearest competitor, the 5700 Ultra
by 30% and when we switched on AA, its advantaged jumped to
over 37%. With the resolution set to 1600x1200, with
and without AA, the FX5900XT-VTD128's leads increased to 53%
and 45% respectively.
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|
Benchmarks
With
Halo |
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Halo
- No Xbox Here! |
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Halo |
For
many gamers, the release of Halo marked the end of a
long wait, since it was originally released as an Xbox
exclusive a few years back. No additional patches or
tweaks are needed to benchmark with Halo, as Gearbox has
included all of the necessary information in their
README file. The Halo benchmark runs through four of
the cut-scenes from the game, after which the average
frame rate is recorded. We ran this benchmark twice,
once at 1024x768 and then again at 1280x1024.
Anti-aliasing doesn't work properly with this game at
the moment, so all of the test below were run with
anti-aliasing disabled. |
The FX5900XT-VTD128 smoked the
Radeon 9600 XT and the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra in the Halo
benchmark as well. When we ran this test at 1024x768,
the MSI card's average frame-rate of 45.38 frames per second
was a full 10 FPS, or 28.2%, faster than the Radeon 9600 XT.
At 1600x1200, the MSI GeForce FX5900XT-VTD128 also held onto
a 10 FPS advantage, but because frame-rates were lower at
this resolution, that same 10 FPS equates to a 44% lead.
Unreal Tournament 2003 & Splinter Cell Testing
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