X-bit labs

NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra against ATI RADEON 9800 XT: Shader Wars (page 16)

Category: Video

by Tim Tscheblockov

[ 10/23/2003 | 03:31 PM ]

Performance in Aquamark3

To Tell the truth, I tend to consider Aquamark3 test set not a synthetic graphics cards performance benchmark, but an excellent demonstration of the potential implied in the new Massive Development’s gaming engine.

The test consists of 9 episodes. Each of these episodes demonstrates one of the technologies used by the engine. Despite that, there are no significant differences between all 9 scenes, which I personally regard as a certain disadvantage, because it makes the test not “synthetic” enough.

Taking this fact into account I would like to offer you the average performance results for all nice benchmarks, because it doesn’t make much sense to analyze each of them separately. The scenes level of detail was set to the maximum throughout the entire test session:

In the lightest mode without FSAA and anisotropic filtering, NVIDIA based graphics cards appeared a little ahead of the competitors.

When the FSAA is enabled, ATI solutions manage to outperform the competitors. It is probably not the memory bus bandwidth that matters here the most, but the pixel shaders processing speed and the texturing speed.

Enabled anisotropic filtering again pushes ATI forward.

Here I would like to stress that when you involve configuration files and enable anisotropic filtering, Aquamark3 will not use tri-linear filtering, even though you will see it enabled in the settings.

In the heaviest mode, ATI chips manage to retain their advantageous position.

Well, the last of our today’s tests again declared the failure of NVIDIA’s solutions.