ATi RADEON - The Empire strikes back (10/15)

Benchmarks - Quake3

Quake 3 uses one of the most modern OpenGL engines available today. It supports hardware transformation (the T of T&L) and makes heavy use of multitexturing and High Res textures.

QUAKE 3 - Intel P3 866E - ASUS CUSL2 - I815

The RADEON doesn’t stand a chance against the Voodoo5 5500 and the GeForce2 boards in 16 bit color. Once we switch to 32bit, the RADEON can once again sneak past the GF2 32MB, a phenomenon we already saw in MDK2. The Hercules 3D Prophet II 64, also running its memory at 183 MHz DDR, still retains its lead up to 1280x1024, but takes second place to the RADEON by 0,2 frames in 1600x1200. The Voodoo5 puts up a very good fight, but overall it’s the slowest card in 32bit. 70 frames at 1024 isn’t exactly bad, though...

QUAKE 3 - AMD Athlon 700 - TEKRAM KX7-A - KX133

The results parallel those of the PIII system, with slightly lower results due to the lower clockspeed.

QUAKE 3 - Intel P3 1GHz - ASUS P3B-F - I440BX

Repeat performance all the way... No changes, no suprises.

So, what have we learned? In Q3A, the RADEON shows the same low 16bit performance already seen in MDK2 and places behind the Voodoo 5, despite its theoretical advantage of having a T&L unit. ATi should definitely do something about this. The excellent 32bit scores prove that the low 16bit scores aren’t the result of a low fillrate. Still, it can only pass the 3D Prophet II 64 in the very highest 32 bit resolution.

Copyright: 07.08.2000 -   RIVA Station 2000 - Lars Weinand
No Copy without Permission!

Translation by Benjamin Kraft

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