Albatron GeForce4 128MB Ti4200 Review - Benchmarks

(Page 2 of 4 )

---

BENCHMARKING:

To benchmark these cards we used the same system, with the only change being the video card.  For all of the benchmarks you see we used the nVidia 40.41 reference drivers.

 

TEST SYSTEM SPECS:

*  Abit BD7-RAID Motherboard
*  P4 1.6A @ 2.13Ghz (16x133)
*  512MB Crucial DDR (2 x 256MB Sticks)
*  US Robotics NIC Card
*  Philips Acoustic Edge Sounds Card
*  60GB Maxtor 7200RPM Hard Drive.
*  Antec 330w Power Supply.
*  WindowsXP Professional Edition OS

 

The reason I mention the seemingly unimportant components is I want to leave no doubt in your mind what was being run should you attempt to replicate these results in your own system.
 

BENCHMARK PROGRAMS:

*  MadOnion.com's 3dMark 2001 Build 330
*  nVidia Chameleon Benchmark
*  Serious Sam
*  Quake III Arena

 

All of the tests were run on the settings indicated and identically on each card.  Between each card the nVidia drivers were completely removed and deleted from the registry, then reinstalled with the next card.  All benchmarks were run at the cards default speeds except where indicated.  There were no system or driver tweaks utilized for these benchmarks as this review is not to see how well we can tweak, but to show you the raw performance of these cards when put head to head.  I would fully expect you to be able to beat these marks with a similar system.  As a matter of fact, if you can't then let us know so we can all make fun of you!

We are not showing you any benchmark results below 1024x768x32 for several reasons.  The first is that we pay damn good money for our systems so that we can play games at the resolutions we want to.  Why build your mega system to play QuakeIII at 640x480?  We show you the resolutions and color depths you'll be using so you know what to expect when you game with these cards.  The second is that quite frankly,  these cards eat up most applications at 800x600 or below.  While there may be a number difference between 150FPS and 174FPS, on the screen it doesn't matter one iota so why bother ya with them?

As far as FSAA goes, we used nothing but Quincunx with only rare exception where noted.  The reason is it looks stellar, doesn't cause a HUGE performance hit, and the majority of gamers we talk to use this setting for everyday gaming.  We show you FSAA at 1024x768x32 and at 1600x1200x32.  At 1024 because realistically FSAA is optimized for that resolution, above that its ALMOST pointless.  Then we show it to you at 1600x1200 because if you're one of these whacked out people who like running that insane resolution, we didn't want you having doubt in your mind as to what this card would do when put to the test.

For the overclocking portion the room temperature was consistent and no additional cooling solutions were used on any cards, only what they came out of the box with.  One thing to bare in mind with overclocking results in this, and any review really, is that no two cards overclock the same.  There are default speeds for a reason and THAT is the speed you're guaranteed to run.  Overclocking is generally not openly supported by manufacturers and can quite possibly void your warranty (if you're stupid enough to say HEY, I WAS OVERCLOCKING MY VIDEO CARD AND NOW IT DOESN'T WORK ANYMORE!).  The speeds you are seeing us achieve here may be WAY lower or WAY higher than you could get with an identical card.  It's luck of the draw really, do you feel lucky?

Every benchmarks you see here was run with every visual game setting maxed out and set to the resolution specified. The video card was set to blend on Direct3D, FSAA as stated, and V-sync "always off" on OpenGL.

On to the benchmarks:

 

QUAKE III:

While there are a few new benchmarkable games recently on the scene, nothing has overthrown QuakeIII as the king of the benchmarks.  With that in mind, let's see how this card compares to it's competition.  As you can see even with the resolution at a normally unplayable 1600x1200 with 32bit color depth, gaming classic QuakeIII is still MORE than playable at more than 100 frames per second. 

Let's look at Q3 in FSAA and without.

 

 

 

We see that the Albatron scores right on par with what we have come to expect from the Ti4200 line of graphics cards.  The additional memory doesn't seem to be a big advantage for the card, but it certainly isn't slowing it down any as the Albatron eeks out the win by a negligible difference.

 

On to the rest of the benchmarks...

Next: Benchmarks Part 2 >>
 

More Video Cards Articles
More By Jim Miller

Comments On: Albatron GeForce4 128MB Ti4200 Review

>>> Be the FIRST to comment on this article!