AGP Performance Explained

When it was originally introduced, AGP was pointed out as being a high end 3D solution for desktop PCs, and as you might be able to tell from the above scores, that does hold true. Completely shattering the competition, the ATI 3D Rage Pro based AGP card achieved a 3D Score over two times greater than the Matrox Millennium II which supposedly improved on the lack of 3D capabilities in the original Millennium. However, one must take into consideration that not all of the 3D features used by the 3D Winbench 97 Test Suite are supported by the Matrox Millennium II, in fact most of the features aren't supported and therefore caused the Millennium II to produce a few awful scores when compared to the ATI card, which supports all but one of the 3D features used. In order to clear up the confusion as to which specific 3D features were used, below is a list comparing the features supported and used by the ATI 3D Rage Pro to those of the Matrox Millennium II.

Does this explain the difference in the performance of the ATI 3D Rage Pro when compared to the Matrox Millennium II under 3D Winbench 97? Simply put, yes! Although there are still quite a few more variables influencing the performance of the AGP card over the PCI card in 3D Windows situations, the supported 3D features list of the AGP card considerably outnumber those of the inferior PCI card. How does this effect the individual tests of 3D Winbench 97? Take a look at the below comparisons:

In most cases the ATI card smoked the PCI Millennium II, however there are a few areas, particularly when dealing with Triangle Fills of 1000 pixels. The only explanation for this being that an excellent design cannot be beat even if a superior technology is used, now a comparison of a Matrox Millennium II AGP and a Matrox Millennium II PCI could prove to give this new technology a fair chance.