Date:
Monday , June 28, 2004
Author:
Brent Justice
Editor:
Sean Quinn
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CPU Scaling ATI’s and NVIDIA’s Best

Wondering how ATI’s and NVIDIA’s latest video cards stack up on different platforms and CPU speeds? We use real-world gameplay in FarCry, Battlefield Vietnam, and Flight Simulator 2004 to find out just how much of a factor CPUs are in today's gaming.

Introduction:

Want one of the new video cards but don't know whether or not you have enough CPU horsepower to back it up? This article is focused on showing you what level of gameplay a video card upgrade could net you today.

Recently NVIDIA and ATI both announced their next generation video card technology codenamed NV40 and R420 respectively. We have covered the technology behind NVIDIA’s and ATI’s new graphics cores already. If you haven’t heard about them, or need a refresher course, please first read the technology behind those graphics chips; NV40 Tech is here and R420 Tech is here.

After reading about all of the technology behind each graphics chip you see that NVIDIA will have a whole series based on their technology, scaling from the value segment all the way up to the enthusiast segment. They have named this the GeForce 6 series. The first video card they have debuted to the public, which we initially reviewed here, is the GeForce 6800Ultra.

ATI’s new technology is currently only found in the enthusiast and performance segments, while their mainstream and value segments remain using the last generation's technology. The new name for the series using the new R420 technology is called the X800 series, with specific cards being the X800XT-Platinum Edition and the X800Pro. We have reviewed both of these.

In those reviews we concentrated on finding the best gaming experience that each card provides on one test platform. We used an ABIT IC7-G with a Pentium 4 3.4GHz “C” processor. One thing we have been asked about a lot recently is how these video cards perform across different platforms and levels of CPU speeds.

This article will address CPU scaling on the GeForce 6800Ultra, Radeon X800XT-PE, and Radeon X800Pro. We are going to use three games, FarCry, Battlefield Vietnam, and Flight Simulator 2004 with two sections, Highest Playable and Apples-to-Apples.

There have been a few leaked Forceware drivers since our initial review that claim to increase performance on the GeForce 6800Ultra. We chose not to test with them, because they were not WHQL candidate drivers and were not a driver version that would be shipping by retail manufacturers. Additionally, they contained a plethora of bugs in games, like FarCry for example. Now that NVIDIA has provided us with a WHQL candidate driver, Forceware 61.34, we can use it on the GeForce 6800Ultra to test game performance with.

How We Tested:

AMD Platforms:

MSI K8N Neo 2 Platinum, Socket 939 Athlon64 3500+ @ 2.21GHz, 2 X 512MB Corsair XMS PC3200LL TwinX Dual Channel DDR400, Maxtor 40GB ATA/133, Windows XP Professional SP1 with DirectX 9.0b.

ABIT KV8 Pro, Socket 754 Athlon64 3000+ @ 2.45GHz, 2 X 512MB Corsair XMS PC3200LL TwinX Dual Channel DDR400, Maxtor 40GB ATA/133, Windows XP Professional SP1 with DirectX 9.0b.

ABIT NF7-S, AthlonXP “Barton” 2500+ @ 1.83GHz, 2 X 512MB Corsair XMS PC3200LL TwinX Dual Channel DDR400, Maxtor 40GB ATA/133, Windows XP Professional SP1 with DirectX 9.0b.

Intel Platforms:

ABIT IC7-G, Pentium4 3.4GHz “C”, 2 X 512MB Corsair XMS PC3200LL TwinX Dual Channel DDR400, Maxtor 40GB ATA/133, Windows XP Professional SP1 with DirectX 9.0b.

ABIT IC7-G, Pentium4 3.0GHz “C”, 2 X 512MB Corsair XMS PC3200LL TwinX Dual Channel DDR400, Maxtor 40GB ATA/133, Windows XP Professional SP1 with DirectX 9.0b.

ABIT IC7-G, Pentium4 2.4GHz “C”, 2 X 512MB Corsair XMS PC3200LL TwinX Dual Channel DDR400, Maxtor 40GB ATA/133, Windows XP Professional SP1 with DirectX 9.0b.

Video Cards:

NVIDIA GeForce 6800Ultra – Operating at default clock speeds 400MHz/1.1GHz using ForceWare 61.34 (WHQL Candidate).

ATI Radeon X800XT-PE – Operating at default clock speeds 520MHz/1.12GHz using Catalyst 4.6 (WHQL).

ATI Radeon X800Pro – Operating at default clock speeds 475MHz/900MHz using Catalyst 4.6 (WHQL).

We left the control panel settings at default settings for all video cards save for disabling VSYNC and manipulating the AA/AF levels, therefore Trilinear Optimizations were enabled for the 6800Ultra/X800XT-PE/X800Pro.