ATI Radeon 9800SE Video Card Review
Benchmarking
Test configuration:
| Motherboard: |
JetWay S446 (SiS 645) |
| Processor: |
P4 Northwood 1.6A@2.13A GHz (133x16) |
| Memory: |
256 MB Hynix PC2100 DDR SDRAM (CL=2) |
| HDD: |
Maxtor Diamond Plus 8 40 Gb |
| Video cards: |
• Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9800 128 Mb (ATI Radeon 9800);
• ATI Radeon 9800SE;
• Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9800SE. |
| OS |
Microsoft Windows XP SP1 ENG, DirectX 9.0b |
| Driver: |
Detonator 45.23 WHQL and ForceWare 52.16
Catalyst 3.9 |
We remove all the decorative "niceties" out of the Windows GUI and set the operating system to maximum performance.
Disable the Vsync forcedly via the drivers both in OpenGL and in Direct3D applications. The S3TC texture compression was also disabled.
Test software:
- 3DMark2003;
- 3DMark2001SE;
- Codecreatures v1.0.0 (a DirectX 8.1 application, shaders on, Hardware T&L);
- Return to Castle Wolfenstein v1.0 (OpenGL, multitexturing. The image quality was set to the maximum. Demo Checkpoint was used);
- Unreal Tournament 2003 (Direct3D, Hardware T&L, vertex shaders, Dot3, cube texturing. "Antalus Flyby" demo);
- Gun Metal Benchmark 2 v1.20s (a DirectX 9.0 benchmark, Vertex Shaders 2.0, Pixel Shaders 1.1, Hardware T&L);
- X2: The Threat Demo (Direct3D, multitexturing, Dot3, running in the benchmark mode embedded in the demo version);
- Final Fantasy XI Official Benchmark 2 (a benchmark for assessing the performance in the future game Final Fantasy XI. Unfortunately, the developers haven't presented any data on the gaming engine);
- HALO: Combat Evolved 1.2 (DirectX 9.0, Vertex Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0, Pixel Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0, Hardware T&L, quality set to the maximum possible);
- AquaMark 3 (DirectX 9.0, Vertex Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0, Pixel Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0, Hardware T&L, AquaMark3 Triscore mode);
- Half-life 2 leaked beta (DirectX 9.0, Vertex Shaders 2.0, Pixel Shaders 2.0, default quality);
- Unreal II: The Awakening (Direct3D, vertex shaders, Hardware T&L, Dot3, cube texturing, quality offered by the BenchemAll suite).
Benchmarking Results
The tests with the PowerColor Radeon 9800SE cards were run in two modes. In the nominal mode and with the 4 additional pipelines unlocked (more precisely, the legitimate ATI Radeon 9800 Pro pipelines). A few boards by Sapphire made on the PCB of ATI Radeon 9500 Pro proved amenable for the re-make, but failed to pass the tests. That is, we get a typical example of that "not all ATI Radeon 9800SE boards are equally useful =)". For comparison, we present the results for an NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 overclocked to speeds of the Ultra version of the chip so as to get a visual idea of the relation of results for the patched PowerColor Radeon 9800SE versus the NVIDIA counterpart. In none of the cases we will get boards running as fast as the original ATI Radeon 9800 Pro and NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900. The comparison is more interesting in that Hi-end boards albeit bought are purchased as a basis for further modernization and re-make, so the users would be much interested in comparison of the results for boards supplied by both 3D flagships to date which somehow are amenable to re-making/overclocking.
Synthetic benchmarks:
In this review, we are not bringing in the results of tests for the already traditional synthetic benchmarks like ShaderMark v2.0 and D3D RightMark, since the review of these boards is more consumer-oriented and is unlikely to add more clarity if loaded with abundance of useless synthetic benchmarking diagrams versus forecasted results.
3DMark 2001SE
Let's look at the results produced by the "old-timers" of our benchmarking sessions. They are quite predictable. As was expected, the Sapphire Radeon 9800SE with 128-bit memory bus shows the worst results of all the tested boards. The 128-bit memory bus makes itself felt. The NVIDIA counterpart in the person of ASUS V9950 overclocked to 450/850 MHz for the core and memory respectively takes a middle position between the PowerColor's ATI Radeon 9800SE (256-bit) in the nominal mode and with 4 additional rendering pipelines enabled.
3DMark 2003
As you can see from the diagrams, the performance difference between the original ATI's Radeon 9800SE 256-bit and its "patched version" is quite substantial (in the previous test you couldn't see that drastical difference because of the greater processor-dependence of the test as compared to 3DMark 2003). But the 128- and 256-bit ATI Radeon 9800SE versions are priced very high.
Codecreatures
The alignment of forces and percentages of absolute values in this test remain the same with the only difference that the NVIDIA board shows a more distinct leadership.
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