cornelious0_0
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2003
- Messages
- 12,783
Let me start off here by saying that I (along with many other fellow [H] members) greatly appreciate the time and work put into the [H]ardware Guide, but I'm sure some people are curious to know of some more in-depth results for their cards before they try things out. At the moment I only have the 9800XT to do testing on, or I would be bringing forward more results for you guys. Don't worry though, I'll have my Leadtek A400GT in 1 week or less and I'll be running all the exact same tests on that card.
What I have done is taken my sig system and knocked everything down to stock, out of the box clock speeds/timings, run Doom3's timedemo1 through every resolution I could (my monitor can't do 1600x1200 ) along with every possible detail level. That wasn't enough though, I also wanted to see how my 9800XT would scale up in performance with a faster CPU/system behind it, so I went and bumped my 2.8C up to 245fsb, for a clock of 3.43GHz, a 643MHz increase. I'm not going to go into any more explanations or anything right now, I'll just give you the numbers to let you make your own conclusions, but I will finish up with a point form summary of my thoughts.
For the following tests, the results will be displayed in the form 2.8GHz / 3.43GHz, so that you can clearly see the fps differences once I had kicked in my cpu overclock. Note, all results are average fps readings.
Here we go:
Ultra Detail
1280x1024: 29.3fps / 29.3fps - 0% gain
1024x768: 40.9fps / 41.5fps - 1.5% gain
800x600: 51.2fps / 54.8fps - 7% gain
640x480: 57.7fps / 64.3fps - 11.4% gain
High Detail
1280x1024: 32fps / 32fps - 0% gain
1024x768: 45.3fps / 46.8fps - 3.3% gain
800x600: 56.8fps / 62.1fps - 9.3% gain
640x480: 62.2fps / 71.8fps - 15.4% gain
Medium Detail
1280x1024: 34.1fps / 34.3fps - 0.6% gain
1024x768: 48.9fps / 51.4fps - 5.1% gain
800x600: 60.4fps / 68.1fps - 12.7% gain
640x480: 63.0fps / 75.7fps - 20.2% gain
Low Detail
1280x1024: 34.2fps / 34.5fps - 0.9% gain
1024x768: 49.0fps / 51.6fps - 5.3% gain
800x600: 60.4fps / 68.4fps - 13.2% gain
640x480: 63.1fps / 76.4fps - 21.1% gain
- As you can see, the 9800XT simply doesn't have the power to compete at 1280x1024, as it basically does NOT benefit from the faster processor
- Only at 800x600 and 640x480 is the 9800XT CPU limited, as once we hit 1024x768, the gains from the extra 600MHz on the processor dwindle down to gains of 5% of less.
- Raising the detail level in the game has VERY little effect on the performance (until you hit Ultra Detail)....what matters more is the resolution, as you can see for yourself.
- While raising the detail level doesn't have a HUGE effect on the cards performance, it does cut back on the effectiveness of the CPU overclock, again, as you can notice from my results.
- I did try overclocking the card from 412/730 to 440/800 however, even though these overclocks are perfectly fine elsewhere Doom3 IS extremely anal about GPU overclocks, as Carmack said...I had massive checkerboarding even at these points. What's more is that even at 1280x1024 High/Ultra I only saw gains of 2fps on average, showing that there really isn't any need to overclock this card for Doom3.....especially at lower resolutions where the 9800XT is CPU limited to begin with.
I hope you all enjoyed my little analysis here, and be sure to start looking again in about 1 weeks time, when I'll have all the same results up for the Leadtek 6800GT, both at GT and Ultra clock speeds (assuming it hits them, which it should). Until then, feel free to leave any thoughts or comments you have for me, as I love to hear from my readers.
What I have done is taken my sig system and knocked everything down to stock, out of the box clock speeds/timings, run Doom3's timedemo1 through every resolution I could (my monitor can't do 1600x1200 ) along with every possible detail level. That wasn't enough though, I also wanted to see how my 9800XT would scale up in performance with a faster CPU/system behind it, so I went and bumped my 2.8C up to 245fsb, for a clock of 3.43GHz, a 643MHz increase. I'm not going to go into any more explanations or anything right now, I'll just give you the numbers to let you make your own conclusions, but I will finish up with a point form summary of my thoughts.
For the following tests, the results will be displayed in the form 2.8GHz / 3.43GHz, so that you can clearly see the fps differences once I had kicked in my cpu overclock. Note, all results are average fps readings.
Here we go:
Ultra Detail
1280x1024: 29.3fps / 29.3fps - 0% gain
1024x768: 40.9fps / 41.5fps - 1.5% gain
800x600: 51.2fps / 54.8fps - 7% gain
640x480: 57.7fps / 64.3fps - 11.4% gain
High Detail
1280x1024: 32fps / 32fps - 0% gain
1024x768: 45.3fps / 46.8fps - 3.3% gain
800x600: 56.8fps / 62.1fps - 9.3% gain
640x480: 62.2fps / 71.8fps - 15.4% gain
Medium Detail
1280x1024: 34.1fps / 34.3fps - 0.6% gain
1024x768: 48.9fps / 51.4fps - 5.1% gain
800x600: 60.4fps / 68.1fps - 12.7% gain
640x480: 63.0fps / 75.7fps - 20.2% gain
Low Detail
1280x1024: 34.2fps / 34.5fps - 0.9% gain
1024x768: 49.0fps / 51.6fps - 5.3% gain
800x600: 60.4fps / 68.4fps - 13.2% gain
640x480: 63.1fps / 76.4fps - 21.1% gain
- As you can see, the 9800XT simply doesn't have the power to compete at 1280x1024, as it basically does NOT benefit from the faster processor
- Only at 800x600 and 640x480 is the 9800XT CPU limited, as once we hit 1024x768, the gains from the extra 600MHz on the processor dwindle down to gains of 5% of less.
- Raising the detail level in the game has VERY little effect on the performance (until you hit Ultra Detail)....what matters more is the resolution, as you can see for yourself.
- While raising the detail level doesn't have a HUGE effect on the cards performance, it does cut back on the effectiveness of the CPU overclock, again, as you can notice from my results.
- I did try overclocking the card from 412/730 to 440/800 however, even though these overclocks are perfectly fine elsewhere Doom3 IS extremely anal about GPU overclocks, as Carmack said...I had massive checkerboarding even at these points. What's more is that even at 1280x1024 High/Ultra I only saw gains of 2fps on average, showing that there really isn't any need to overclock this card for Doom3.....especially at lower resolutions where the 9800XT is CPU limited to begin with.
I hope you all enjoyed my little analysis here, and be sure to start looking again in about 1 weeks time, when I'll have all the same results up for the Leadtek 6800GT, both at GT and Ultra clock speeds (assuming it hits them, which it should). Until then, feel free to leave any thoughts or comments you have for me, as I love to hear from my readers.