Fall 2003 Video Card Roundup - Part 3: ATI's Radeon 9600 XT
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on October 15, 2003 10:26 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
C&C Generals: Zero Hour Performance no AA/AF
The recently released expansion to the very popular Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game Command & Conquer Generals seems to do a good job of living up to the standards set by its prestigious ancestry. RTS games usually get overlooked in GPU roundups and comparisons as they aren't considered graphically intense. However, smoothness is very important to gameplay; goodness knows I've blamed plenty of lost armies on ill timed drops in framerate. For this benchmark, we created a multiplayer game consisting of 6 hard armies on one team with us, and one easy army. We then used the replay feature in conjunction with FRAPS to measure performance. This was done with and without 4X AA/8X AF
At 10x7, with no AA/AF, C&C is CPU limited, and the performance of the ATI cards is all but identical. The NVIDIA cards trail the ATI cards by about 20%, and they seem CPU bound as well.
C&C Generals: Zero Hour Performance 4X AA/8X AF
We can see some separation in the ranks when we turn on up the juice. Basically, we see the RV3x0 based cards fall off in performance to where the NVIDIA cards were without AA/AF.
The NVIDIA cards drop off in performance as well, but the 5600 Ultra is able to maintain its speed a little better than the Ti 4200.
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Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
Sorry but these scores are rubbishAnonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
Is there a particular reason why a 9500pro card isn't included in these reviews. It seems at least as worthy as the the Ti4200, or I could be just biased because I have a 9500pro. Either way, if you could include it in future reviews it'd be appreciated.PrinceGaz - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
I agree with #4, the 9800se should be included as it is in the price range. Its widely available and radically different from the 9600pro/xt and fx5600ultra as its got a full 256-bit memory bus. That should certainly help with DX8 titles but its relatively slow four-pipeline (by default) core clocked at 325MHz could be a problem with future shader-intensive DX9 games.Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
Man I love to see how well the 9700 Pro still holds it own after all this time. What a great card!Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
i remember an article where some guy from ATI said that this card would outperform the 9700 pro. i had serious doubts about such claim and kind of laughed about it.and i guess that i was right, as it does not outperform the 9700pro.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
THANKS FOR USING ALL CAPS #8!!Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
homeworld 2 ran just fine on my radeon 9500 pro...I'm running the 3.7's though...Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
/me pets my modded 9500np->9700proAnonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
Nvidia will be back. Not that I care. As long as I can buy a decent card from someone I don't care who it comes from.Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
Any idiot who "built computers for a living" should know better than to shout. Especially in the presence of his superiors. Check the settings again moron. They often AA/AF on and off, as well as V-sync off etc. If you had time to benchmark your systems with all these variables then you had too much time on your hands. Hence the "built" not build.