GPU Cheatsheet - A History of Modern Consumer Graphics Processors

DirectX 8 Performance

Below you can see our plot of the DirectX 8 components.

GF4 Ti4200 64	250	500	4	2	2	128	2000	113	7629	100.0%	100.0%	100.0%	100.0%
DirectX 8 and 8.1
GF4 Ti4800	300	650	4	2	2	128	2400	135	9918	120.0%	130.0%	120.0%	123.3%
GF4 Ti4600	300	600	4	2	2	128	2400	135	9155	120.0%	120.0%	120.0%	120.0%
GF4 Ti4400	275	550	4	2	2	128	2200	124	8392	110.0%	110.0%	110.0%	110.0%
GF4 Ti4800 SE	275	550	4	2	2	128	2200	124	8392	110.0%	110.0%	110.0%	110.0%
GF4 Ti4200 8X	250	514	4	2	2	128	2000	113	7843	100.0%	102.8%	100.0%	100.9%
GF4 Ti4200 64	250	500	4	2	2	128	2000	113	7629	100.0%	100.0%	100.0%	100.0%
GF4 Ti4200 128	250	444	4	2	2	128	2000	113	6775	100.0%	88.8%	100.0%	96.3%
8500	275	550	4	2	1	128	2200	69	8392	110.0%	110.0%	61.1%	93.7%
9100 Pro	275	550	4	2	1	128	2200	69	8392	110.0%	110.0%	61.1%	93.7%
9100	250	500	4	2	1	128	2000	63	7629	100.0%	100.0%	55.6%	85.2%
8500 LE	250	500	4	2	1	128	2000	63	7629	100.0%	100.0%	55.6%	85.2%
9200 Pro	300	600	4	1	1	128	1200	75	9155	60.0%	120.0%	66.7%	82.2%
GF3 Ti500	240	500	4	2	1	128	1920	54	7629	96.0%	100.0%	48.0%	81.3%
9000 Pro	275	550	4	1	1	128	1100	69	8392	55.0%	110.0%	61.1%	75.4%
GeForce 3	200	460	4	2	1	128	1600	45	7019	80.0%	92.0%	40.0%	70.7%
9000	250	400	4	1	1	128	1000	63	6104	50.0%	80.0%	55.6%	61.9%
9200	250	400	4	1	1	128	1000	63	6104	50.0%	80.0%	55.6%	61.9%
GF3 Ti200	175	400	4	2	1	128	1400	39	6104	70.0%	80.0%	35.0%	61.7%
9250	240	400	4	1	1	128	960	60	6104	48.0%	80.0%	53.3%	60.4%
9200 SE	200	333	4	1	1	64	800	50	2541	40.0%	33.3%	44.4%	39.2%
* RAM clock is the effective clock speed, so 250 MHz DDR is listed as 500 MHz.
** Textures/Pipeline is the maximum number of texture lookups per pipeline.
*** NVIDIA says their GFFX cards have a "vertex array", but in practice it generally functions as indicated.
**** Single-texturing fill rate = core speed * pixel pipelines
+ Multi-texturing fill rate = core speed * maximum textures per pipe * pixel pipelines
++ Vertex rates can vary by implementation. The listed values reflect the manufacturers' advertised rates.
+++ Bandwidth is expressed in actual MB/s, where 1 MB = 1024 KB = 1048576 Bytes.
++++ Relative performance is normalized to the GF4 Ti4200 64, but these values are at best a rough estimate.

No weighting has been applied to the DirectX 8 charts, and performance in games generally falls in line with what is represented in the above chart. Back in the DirectX 8 era, NVIDIA really had a huge lead in performance over ATI. The Radeon 8500 was able to offer better performance than the GeForce 3, but that lasted all of two months before the launch of the GeForce 4 Ti line. Of course, many people today continue running GeForce4 Ti cards with few complaints about performance - only high quality rendering modes and DX9-only applications are really forcing people to upgrade. For casual gamers, finding a used GF4Ti card for $50 or less may be preferable to buying a low-end DX9 card. It really isn't until the FX5700 Ultra and FX5600 Ultra that the GF4Ti cards are outclassed, and those cards still cost well over $100 new.

ATI did have one advantage over NVIDIA in the DirectX 8 era, however. They worked with Microsoft to create an updated version of DirectX; version 8.1. This added support for some "advanced pixel shader" effects, which brought the Pixel Shader version up to 1.4. There wasn't anything that could be done in DX8.1 that couldn't be done with DX8.0, but several operations could be done in one pass instead of two passes. Support for DirectX 8 games was very late in coming, however, and support for ATI's extensions was, if possible, even more so. There are a few titles which now support the DX8.1 extensions, but even then the older DX8.1 ATI cards are generally incapable of running these games well.

It is worth noting that the vertex rates on the NVIDIA cards are calculated as 90% of the clock speed times the number of vertex pipelines, divided by four. Why is that important? It's not, really, but on the FX and GF6 series of cards, NVIDIA uses clock speed times vertex pipelines divided by four for the claimed vertex rate. It could be that architectural improvements made the vertex rate faster. Such detail was lacking on the ATI side of things, although 68 million vertices/second for the 8500 was claimed in a few places, which matches the calculation used on NVIDIA's DX9 cards. You don't have to look any further than such benchmarks as 3DMark01 to find that these theoretical maximum are never reached, of course - even with one light source and no textures, the high polygon count scene doesn't come near the claimed rate.