Nvidia GeForce3 Ti 500 Preview (Page 5/6)

Posted: October 1, 2001
Written by: Dan "Tweak Monkey" Kennedy

Benchmarks

We've established by now that doing benchmarks at any resolution lower than 1024x768 is pointless, since most new cards will push well over 100 FPS at that level. For this reason, and since we were really limited on time in writing this article, we are only testing 1280x1024 and 1600x1200, with various FSAA settings, in Quake3 (OpenGL) and 3DMark 2001 (Direct3D).

Quake 3 Arena

Quake 3 @ 1280 x 1024 x 32bpp; 2X FSAA enabled

GF3 10.40 - 55.1 FPS
GF3 21.85 - 63.2 FPS
GF3 Ti500 - 72.5 FPS

With 2X FSAA and 1280x1024, the GF3 Ti500 is still significantly faster than the GF3 with its original drivers. However, when the new drivers come into play, the Ti500 is still roughly 15% faster (compared to 32% with the old drivers).

Quake 3 @ 1280 x 1024 x 32bpp; 4X FSAA enabled

GF3 10.40 - 28.7 FPS
GF3 21.85 - 39.1 FPS
GF3 Ti500 - 44.9 FPS

Here, the GF3 Ti500 is about the only chip that would be close to 100% playable. With an average frame rate of 28.7 or even 39.1, it is that much worse when the frame rate dips.

Quake 3 @ 1600 x 1200 x 32bpp; FSAA disabled

GF3 10.40 - 76.5 FPS
GF3 21.85 - 84.0 FPS
GF3 Ti500 - 90.1 FPS

The results here are actually somewhat meaningless. The frame rates are so high at 1600x1200x32bpp now, that we'll just call it "smooth" with either of the cards. The video card industry has come a long way...

Quake 3 @ 1600 x 1200 x 32bpp; 2X FSAA enabled

GF3 10.40 - 36.4 FPS
GF3 21.85 - 43.1 FPS
GF3 Ti500 - 50.1 FPS

The Ti500 again pulls far enough ahead of the others to make the difference between "smooth" and "choppy" a bit more apparent. I tried playing Q3 with this setting and it was nearly perfect. The GF3 w/ new drivers was pretty much smooth, but when it slowed down, it was really really bad.

Quake 3 @ 1600 x 1200 x 32bpp; QuinCunx FSAA enabled

GF3 10.40 - 26.4 FPS
GF3 21.85 - 30.2 FPS
GF3 Ti500 - 40.8 FPS

I tried running tests at 1600x1200x32 w/ 4X FSAA but it always appeared (from frame rates) to drop down to 2X FSAA. So I tried it out at "5X", or "QuinCunx", the setting between 2X and 4X. As you can tell, the difference at this high of a setting is more obvious than 2X. The GF3 Ti500 is roughly 55% faster than the GF3 w/ old drivers. It is likely that this is the "50% improvement in 6 months" that Nvidia brags about with its product cycles. Even with the new drivers, the GF3 Ti500 is still 35% faster than the old GF3 with this massively video-intensive application.

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