X-bit labs

ATI RADEON X800: R420 Totally Exposed (page 33)

Category: Video

by Tim Tscheblockov , Alexey Stepin , Anton Shilov

[ 05/04/2004 | 06:42 AM ]

Synthetic Benchmarks: Bump Mapping, Sprites, Etc.

In case of the EMBM method we again had some problems with the GeForce 6800 Ultra driver, that is why it would make more sense to speak only about the RADEON X800 XT/PRO results. The newcomers performed very well, which you can best of all see in 1600x1200. In lower resolutions the results are limited by the CPU performance that is why the results in 640x480 do not actually reflect the real state of things.

When we use Dot3 method, the top solutions, namely RADEON X800 XT and GeForce 6800 Ultra run neck and neck. RADEON X800 PRO outperforms graphics cards of the previous generation, but cannot compete with RADEON 9800 XT and GeForce 6800 Ultra.

This benchmark characterizes the well-balanced combination of the GPU – driver – CPU, when the GPU is loaded with the geometrical calculations, while the CPU – with mathematical ones. As a result, the geometrical performance of the graphics processor as well as the mathematical performance of the central processor affect the final score. ATI RADEON X800 XT/PRO performs fairly well here, which indicates that there are no problems with this solution: graphics processors both process vertex shaders well and the driver doesn’t load the CPU with additional calculations.