CPU Tests

CPU Test 1 and CPU Test 2 were run in 640x480 resolution to reduce the dependence of the results on the graphics card’s performance, especially on their fill-rate. The both tests use Game 1 and Game 2 gaming scenes (without pixel shaders and dynamic shadows). Futuremark Company claims that the results in the CPU tests still depend on the graphics card. We are going to check out how big this dependence is.

We see that the dependence is quite considerable. And “CPU Test 1” becomes the first and only test won by Xabre 600! We were quite surprised at that. In the first CPU test Xabre 600 is 4.7fps faster than GeForceFX 5800 Ultra. In fact, all the leaders of the gaming tests now lose their ground: GeForceFX 5800 Ultra is slower than GeForce4 Titanium based cards and even slower than GeForce3 Ti200, while RADEON 9700 PRO loses to RADEON 9500 PRO and both RADEON 9500 versions. Yeah, the graphics card affects the results of the CPU tests in 3DMark03, but the results are no proportional to the performance of the card in gaming tests. The results let me draw only one conclusion: we shouldn’t rely upon CPU benchmarks integrated into 3DMark03. They may show quite well the performance of different processors when you use them with one and the same graphics card. But when using different graphics cards, you can’t estimate CPU performance accurately enough.

FillRate

Fill-rate measuring tests were run in 1024x768 with standard 3DMark03 and drivers settings.

The results of the FillRate test are somewhat confusing.

In Single-Texturing mode, when there is only one texture laid over one surface, RADEON 9700 shows the best performance. Its eight-pixel pipelines provide the maximum fill-rate of 2600MTexels/sec in this mode, while GeForceFX 5800 Ultra with only four pixel pipelines ensures 2000MTexels/sec. But they swap places in case of multitexturing. Now the higher frequency of NVIDIA GeForceFX 5800 Ultra (500MHz) allows it to outperform the 325MHz RADEON 9700 PRO by more than 1000MTexels/sec.

128MB RADEON 9500 takes the third place in the single-texturing mode. It has the same core frequency (275MHz) as RADEON 9500 PRO, but only four pixel pipelines against eight. How did it win then? It’s because the 128MB version of RADEON 9500 has a wider memory bus – 256-bit against 128-bit by RADEON 9500 PRO (and RADEON 9500 64MB). Wider memory bus determines higher performance of the 128MB RADEON 9500 over RADEON 9500 PRO and RADEON 9500 64MB.

NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4600 and Ti4800 are following the leaders in the multi-texturing mode: they occupy the third position in the rank.

They have four pixel pipelines with two texturing units each. Together with their higher working frequencies (300MHz), this helps them to outperform RADEON 9500 PRO and other cards, but they still fail to reach RADEON 9700 PRO because of the narrower 128bit memory bus. In multi-texturing mode RADEON 9500 is slowed down by its 128bit memory bus, so that with its 4 pixel pipelines and 1 TMU per pipeline it loses even to GeForce4 Ti4200-8x and Xabre600 with 4 pixel pipelines with 2 TMUs each.

In fact, Xabre 600 once again surprises us with its rather high results: it managed to settle right after GeForce FX 5800 Ultra, Radeon 9700 Pro, GeForce4 Ti4600 and Ti4800, having left all other competitors behind. Unfortunately this card didn’t prove so successful in gaming tests. Let’s figure out why it happened like that. Just like GeForce4 Titanium GPUs, SiS Xabre600 has four pixel pipelines with two texturing units each. The graphics core works at 300MHz, so Xabre 600 is similar to GeForce4 Ti4600 in texture rendering. It only has lower memory frequency: 600MHz against 650MHz by GeForce4 Ti4600/4800. So, it’s quite natural that Xabre 600 performs well in multi-texturing. But why don’t we see these impressive results in single-texturing mode of Fillrate tests? The reason for Xabre 600 doing worse here is its slower memory controller. Single-texturing requires more active communication with the graphics memory than in case of multi-texturing (Each time the graphics chip reads pixel color from the graphics memory, then lays the color of the nearest transparent pixel over it. The operation is repeated 63 times for all 64 flat surfaces.). In other words, higher memory workload pushes Xabre 600 to lose to GeForce4 Titanium series that has faster doubled memory controllers.

Another interesting pair of chips is RADEON 9100 and RADEON 9000. In Single-texturing mode RADEON 9000 with 250MHz chip frequency outpaces RADEON 9100 with 275MHz chip frequency. The memory of RADEON 9100 works at 550MHz, while that of RADEON 9000 – at 500MHz. Therefore, the only reason for it to be faster than RADEON 9100 in Single-texturing mode may be only connected with the optimization of RADEON 9000 as this graphics chip was released after 9100. And in case of multi-texturing RADEON 9100 performs faster as it has two texturing units per pixel pipeline, while RADEON 9000 has only one.

Summing it up, we should say that the results displayed in the diagram correspond to what the manufacturers claim in the official specs.