Date:
Thursday , March 08, 2001
Author:
Kyle Bennett
Editor:
Sean Quinn
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GeForce3 HRAA High Resolution Anti Aliasing

What can the GeForce3 do for you TODAY?

continued...

3DMark HRAA Benchmarks

If you don't know who MadOnion.com is, well then I suggest you type it in your browser and give it a download. It is probably the second most widely accepted benchmark behind Quake3 Arena. It differs from our first benchmark as it uses a DirectX 7 optimized API as opposed to OpenGL. Now this benchmark does not take advantage of ANY of the DX8 instructions on the GeForce3. I had more scores in running this benchmark, but I was having some problems with getting solid and consistent scores. I worked on getting us a good set to compare the Anti-Aliasing with and I would say that these are very solid numbers using the 10.5 NEDs that are out. Next time we will be more in-depth.

Benchmark System Specs: VisionTek GeForce2 Ultra or VisionTek GeForce3, 1200 TBird (courtesy of iCompz), 128Megs of Mushkin Rev.3 SDRam, ThermoEngine (courtesy of AZZO), 10.8 NEDs.

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I think what we are seeing here is the fact that we are using a very immature driver. Keep in mind that NVIDIA has NOT furnished drivers to support this card, therefore we have been left to our own devices. The drivers are still buggy at best and do not work with all games. Anyway, the focus of the article again is to look at the HRAA, and the GeForce3 doubles the score of the GeForce2 Ultra when the GeForce3 uses the the QCAA method.

Quake 3 HRAA Benchmarks

What would any review of ANY THING be without Quake3 benchmarks. I even use it to gauge my personal performance, but we will not talk about that right now. Quake3 is without a doubt the defacto standard in 3D benchmarking today. Of course, it can be argued that that advances in the desktop PC industry is almost 100% driven by the gaming industry, so it comes to figure that Quake3 would reign as king. Quake3 is an OpenGL game, and we used Demo 001 for our results you will see here.

You may also have noticed that our CPU and drivers have switched about a bit and that is why we are posting the system specs with every set of marks.

Benchmark System Specs: VisionTek GeForce2 Ultra or VisionTek GeForce3, 1088 TBird (courtesy of PCNut), 128Megs of Mushkin Rev.3 SDRam, ThermoEngine (courtesy of AZZO), 10.8 NEDs.

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Again, we see the GeForce3 sacrifice about 1/3 of its framerate to QCAA but still maintain an incredible and playable framerate.

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A little more of a toll is paid at 1024x768 resolution. It should also be mentioned that this is the high quality Quake3 setting with EVERY visual option turned on. We were not skimping at all. Also, our score of 67.3 using Quincunx AA reinforces NVIDIA's score that they quoted in their press release. GREAT to see them come forward with the truth and not a bunch of marketing hype about the AA.

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At this high resolution, the GeForce3 shows over a 20% increase in frames when compared with the GeForce2 using no AA at all. Again, the GeForce2 is not capable of 2XAA at this high a resolution, so there is no score. Of course, QCAA is still not an option for a playable game at this resolution either, but I don't think anybody expected it would be. I will say this though, it certainly LOOKS great. Then again, at 1600x1200, do we really NEED AA at all?