X-bit labs

First in DirectX 10.1: ATI Radeon HD 3850/3870 (page 14)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko, Anton Shilov

[ 01/25/2008 | 10:31 AM ]

Testbed and Methods

The comparative theoretical and gaming performance analysis of the ATI Radeon HD 3870 and 3850 was carried out on the following standard test platform:

• Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor (3.0GHz, FSB 1333MHz x 9);  
• DFI LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R/G (ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 chipset) for ATI Radeon based graphics cards;
• Asus P5N32-E SLI mainboard (Nvidia nForce 680i SLI chipset) for Nvidia GeForce based graphics cards;
• Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C5 (2x1GB, 1066MHz, 5-5-5-15, 2T);
• Maxtor MaXLine III 7B250S0 HDD (250GB, Serial ATA-150, 16MB buffer);
• Enermax Galaxy DXX EGX1000EWL 1000W power supply;
• Dell 3007WFP monitor (30", 2560x1600@60Hz max display resolution);
• Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit;
• ATI Catalyst 7.12 for Radeon HD 3800/ HD2900 families;
• Nvidia ForceWare 163.69 for GeForce 8800 GTX/GTS;
• Nvidia ForceWare 169.02 for GeForce 8800 GT.

According to our traditional testing methodology, the drivers were set up to provide the highest possible quality texture filtering and to minimize the influence of software optimizations that both – AMD/ATI and Nvidia – enabled by default. Also, to ensure maximum image quality, we enabled transparent texture filtering options: Adaptive Anti-Aliasing/Multi-sampling for ATI Catalyst and Antialiasing – Transparency: Multisampling for Nvidia ForceWare. As a result, our ATI and Nvidia driver settings looked as follows:

ATI Catalyst:

• Catalyst A.I.: Standard
• Mipmap Detail Level: High Quality
• High Quality AF: On
• Wait for vertical refresh: Always Off
• Enable Adaptive Anti-Aliasing: On/Quality
• Method: Multi-sampling
• Temporal Anti-Aliasing: Off
• Other settings: default

Nvidia ForceWare:

• Texture filtering - Quality: High quality
• Texture filtering - Trilinear optimization: Off
• Texture filtering – Anisotropic sample optimization: Off
• Vertical sync: Force off
• Antialiasing - Gamma correction: On
• Antialiasing - Transparency: Multisampling
• Other settings: default

For our tests we used the following games and benchmarks:

First-Person 3D Shooters

• Battlefield 2142
• Bioshock
• Call of Juarez
• Call of Duty 4
• Crysis
• Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
• F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate
• Half-Life 2: Episode Two
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
• Unreal Tournament 3

Third-Person 3D Shooters

• Lost Planet: Extreme Condition
• Tomb Raider: Legend

RPG

• Hellgate: London
• Gothic 3
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Strategies

• Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts
• Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
• World in Conflict

Synthetic Benchmarks

• Futuremark 3DMark05
• Futuremark 3DMark06

We selected the highest possible level of detail in each game using standard tools provided by the game itself from the gaming menu to each user. The games configuration files weren’t modified in any way. The only exception was Enemy Territory: Quake Wars game where we disabled the built-in fps rate limitation locked at 30fps.

Games supporting DirectX 10 were tested in this particular mode. With a few exceptions, the tests were performed in the following standard resolutions: 1280x1024/960, 1600x1200 and 1920x1200. If the game didn’t support 16:10 display format, we set the last resolution to 1920x1440. We used “eye candy” mode everywhere, where it was possible without disabling the HDR/Shader Model 3.0/Shader Model 4.0. Namely, we ran the tests with enabled anisotropic filtering 16x as well as MSAA 4x antialiasing. We enabled them from the game’s menu. If this was not possible, we forced them using the appropriate driver settings of ATI Catalyst and Nvidia ForceWare drivers

Performance was measured with the games’ own tools and the original demos were recorded if possible. Otherwise, the performance was measured manually with Fraps utility version 2.9.1; some of the results were averaged down to ensure better precision and smaller differences. We also measured the minimum speed of the cards where possible.

ATI Radeon HD 3870 and HD 3850 will be competing against the following solutions:

• Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX (G80, 576/1350/1900MHz, 128sp, 32tmu, 24rop, 384-bit, 768MB GDDR3)
• Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT 512MB (G92, 600/1500/1800MHz, 112sp, 28tmu, 16rop, 256-bit, 512MB GDDR3)
• ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB (R600, 742/1650MHz, 320sp, 16tmu, 16rop, 512-bit, 512MB GDDR3)

Since the new ATI Radeon HD 3800 family uses a new GPU, we have also performed a number of theoretical tests to determine RV670 performance difference from R600. We used the following benchmarks:

• Marko Dolenc’s Fillrate and Pixel Shader Tester
• Xbitmark version 0.65
• Theoretical tests from Futuremark 3DMark06 suite

We are going to start the performance analysis with the discussion of results obtained in these particular tests.