ATI Radeon 9700 Video Card - Test Systems and Benchmarks

Test Systems & Benchmarks

The test systems are comprised of the following components:

AMD SYSTEM

1. MSI KT3 Ultra ARU
2. AMD XP 1700+ Unlocked @ 166x10 (XP2000+)
3. 512 MB Kingmax 2700 (2x256 sticks)
4. Maxtor 80 gig ATA133 7200 rpm hdd
5. 2 x Maxtor 20 gig ATA133 7200 rpm hdd Raid 0
6. Lite On 16x DVD
7. MSI 48x16x48 CDRW
8. ATI Radeon 9700 PRO w/ 6193 drivers
9. SB Live! 5.1 X-Gamer
10. Windows XP Pro
11. BadAss Case (Yellow Aluminum Cheiftec modded by VoyeurMods) 2x80mm Sunon’s front and rear, 2x80mm Clear Fans in the window, 1x120mm Delta 130CFM top blowhole
12. Antec True Blue 480W PSU
13. H2O cooling, consisting of: Maze3, BIX Rad, Eheim 1250

INTEL SYSTEM

1. Soyo SY-P4S-645DX Dragon Ultra
2. Intel 1.8A Northwood
3. 512 MB OCSystem Expeditious Gamer Series PC2700 333MHz CAS 2/CL2 1T DDR SDRAM
4. Maxtor 40 gig ATA133 7200 rpm hdd
5. ATI Radeon 9700 PRO w/ 6193 drivers
6. Windows XP Pro
7. Enermax 350W PSU

Benchmarks

1. Mad Onion’s 3D Mark 2001 SE (build 330)
2. Quake III (PC Gamer Padshop demo)
3. Serious Sam 2: The Second Encounter (The Grand Cathedral Demo)
4. CodeCreatures
5. Unreal Tournament 2003 (High Quality Benchmark provided by Brent from [H]ardOCP)

The benchmarks were run using the Quality settings (4x AA, 16x AF, Texture Preference and Mipmap Detail Level set to the highest quality setting with V-Sync and TruForm on application preference). These aren’t exactly head to head benchmarks, but rather to show performance on both sides of the coin. The AMD system is being run at 166FSB to maximize the performance of the CPU (the PCI & AGP bus are the default 33 & 66 bus speeds since the KT3 Ultra has the 1/5 divider). The Intel system is at the default speed of 1.8 GHz for the simple reason that I wanted to keep the AGP bus at 66 for comparison. For the OC’d benchmarks, only the 9700 was overclocked to 345/666 (+21/+23 overclock respectively) with no additional cooling enhancements made. The memory on the 9700 is in desperate need of some ramsink lovin’ as these puppies get HOT! Now why overclock the 9700 since it’s the fastest thing going, and when you really won’t even notice the extra frame rate? The answer of course, is WHY NOT?!?! On to the numbers.

MAD ONION 3D MARK 2001 PRO (BUILD 330)

Here are the results from 3D Mark:

With the minimal boost in core/memory timings the card sees a nice little jump in MO 3DM.

QUAKE 3 ARENA (PC GAMER PADSHOP DEMO)

This is a demo that I have enjoyed playing. If you haven’t checked out the Padshop maps, they have mods for Q3A, as well as Jedi Knight II, and Elite Force.

It looks as if there was a little CPU bottleneck with the Intel system running stock.

SERIOUS SAM: THE SECOND ENCOUNTER (THE GRAND CATHEDRAL DEMO)

SS:SE is one beautiful looking game when all the eye candy is turned on. Thankfully the 9700 handles the onslaught. All settings within the game were cranked up to Quality, and the fun began.

Again, the Intel CPU can’t hang.

Next: Conclusion >>
 

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