Our test system consisted of:
AMD64 3200+
ABIT KV8-MAX3
2 PC2700 256MB Crucial RAM
120 GIG Maxtor 7200RPM hard drive
Windows XP Service Pack 1
Catalyst 4.2
With each test except for
Final Fantasy Online, we ran each test at three resolutions (800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024). And I’ll also quickly explain the anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering settings when we get to them. First up, as usual, are the synthetic benchmarks.
3D Mark 2001 SE is the first up and a synthetic benchmark from Futuremark. It’s primarily a DirectX 8.1 benchmark. Here are the scores:
At 800x600, the card runs at 27% less than the
Radeon 9800XT. As you move up in resolution, the gap increases to 40% at 1280x1024. Still, at lower resolution, the card runs pretty well compared to the very higher priced
Radeon 9800X.
Our last synthetic benchmark is
Aquamark 3, which is based off a real game engine. The test was conducted with default settings at 1024x768.
The
Radeon 9600XT comes in at 37% less than the powerful
Radeon 9800XT in this test. Let’s move on to real games.
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