![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Thursday , June 13, 2002
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
ATI Catalyst - Part 1
A new driver suite from ATI, check out what all the buzz is about in Part 1 of our look at Catalyst.
Test Setup:
Intel Platform |
Soyo P4S Dragon Ultra / SiS 645 |
P4 2.4GHz Northwood A |
Intel HSF |
1x Corsair 256MB XMS3000 DDR SDRAM |
3Com 905CX-TXNM 10/100 PCI |
Maxtor 40GB ATA/133 |
Windows XP Professional |
DirectX 8.1 |
SiS AGP 1.09f |
ATI AIW 8500 128MB - Clocked at default 275MHz/275MHz with driver version 6071 and Catalyst 6094 for WinXP.
Gainward Ultra/650XP Ti 4200 128MB - Clocked at default 250MHz/444MHz for all tests using driver version 29.42.
I used my Pentium 4 test system which was all ready to go and put the AIW 8500 128MB on it first benchmarking with the previous version 6071 drivers and then formatting and putting the new Catalyst 6094 on. I then used a Gainward GF4 Ti 4200 128MB to compare to using 29.42 WHQL drivers.
3DMark2001SE
To get a good idea where these video cards stand against each other, we ran these tests at 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1200 resolutions. Each test was run with 32 bit color AND 32 bit textures with no DXTC compression. Each resolution for each card is listed on the legend on the right side of the graphs.
Are you seeing what I'm seeing? In 1280x1024 the Radeon 8500 scores 186 3DMarks higher, and at 1600x1200 the Radeon 8500 scores 173 3DMarks higher than the GeForce4 Ti 4200. At 1024x768 the GF4 Ti 4200 has the lead, but only by 50 3DMarks. Compared to the previous 6071 drivers we gained 409 3DMarks at 1600x1200 and 405 3DMarks at 1280x1024 and 249 3DMarks at 1024x768. All impressive improvements just for a driver update.
Quake3
The de facto 3D benchmark of the last few years, Quake 3. We're using patch version 1.17 so that you can compare results with all of the past reviews here at the [H]. Quake3 Bench was used running at Max Settings and Demo001.
Nope, I didn't make a mistake with the numbers here, both driver sets pulled the exact same numbers in Quake3. At this point I can only speculate, we need to look at some more OpenGL benchmarks to know if this is a pattern or not, but judging from this one benchmark there have been no OGL improvements in the driver.
Serious Sam 2
I'm using the script "Extreme Quality" and "Maximum Quality". Extreme Quality sets everything to maximum quality plus the maximum anisotropic level the card supports. Maximum Quality is everything Extreme Quality is minus the Anisotropic Filtering. The Elephant Atrium demo was used.
It's important to note in this benchmark that Extreme Quality sets the anisotropic level to the highest the card will support. In this case, NVIDIA GF4 Ti 4200 card was run at level 8 Anisotropic, its maximum, while our ATI AIW 8500 card was set to level 16.
Again we notice that there is no change between the two driver sets with this OpenGL game. Maximum Quality shows a slight gain, but not noticeable in gameplay. Still, the overall scores of the 8500 core are very nice indeed even though it is bested by the Gainward Ti4200.
Jedi Knight 2
Star Wars Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast is a newly released OpenGL game that many have been anticipating. It has much improved graphics over its predecessor. It fully supports advanced shaders as well as very high texture resolution and effects. There is one demo included in the multi-player section that is good for benchmarking use. In order to enable the benchmarking mode however, you have to make a shortcut to the jk2mp.exe program located in the GameData folder of Jedi Knight 2. You have to put this switch at the end of the line in the Target Area: +set sv_cheats1 So it will look like this: C:\Star Wars JK II Jedi Outcast\GameDatajk2mp.exe" +set sv_cheats 1
Launch from that icon and open up the console with the combination of Shift and ~ to bring down the console menu. Just like in Quake3, type "Timedemo 1" to enable timedemo mode. Now go set your settings under Setup/Video. In our tests, I used settings of: Color Depth: 32 bit, Full Screen: On, Geometric Detail: High, Texture Detail: Very High, Texture Quality: 32 bit, Texture Filter: Trilinear, Detailed Shaders: On.
The new Catalyst driver set actually comes in a bit lower in FPS in this benchmark compared to the 6071's. Do note though how both driver sets still are able to beat the GF4 Ti 4200 in this benchmark!
Comanche 4
This being a Direct3D benchmark just like 3DMark2001SE I expected to see a good improvement like I did in 3DMark2001SE, however I did not. The scores are a bit better than with the previous driver set, however they are nothing worth mentioning.
One more Direct3D benchmark to try...
Code Creatures
Again some changes, but inside a acceptable margin of error and not anything that would translate into noticeable improvement in gameplay, if this were a game.