The same goes for the second game test (it is a kind of third-person-view RPG). The NV31 architecture is advantageous in the hard mode, but worse – in the light one.

The fourth game test from 3DMark03, the notorious Mother Nature, drives yet another nail into the coffin of shader units of NVIDIA GeForce FX chips. The approach of ATI Technologies to shaders 2.0 realization is unquestionably best available. And these shaders are a part of DirectX 9.0! Even GeForce FX 5900 falls far behind the graphics cards featuring GPUs of the Canadian origin. Among RADEONs themselves, the 9500 PRO model is fastest in this test. Seems like ATI was wrong in reducing the number of pipelines to four in RV350: it is only by overclocking that RADEON 9600 PRO can run as fast as its predecessor.