I decided to use a new system for benchmarking with the BFG 5700 Ultra and 9600XT. A 3 GHz Pentium 4, kindly provided by ATI is the basis of the new test system. Here are the specifications for the test system:

Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz 800 MHz FSB CPU
512MB DDR3200 memory Corsair XMS3200 running@ 400 MHz in Dual Channel mode
Intel i865GLC motherboard using 5.00.012 inf
Onboard audio
ASUS RADEON 9600XT running 500/300 core/memory running ATI 3.9 Catalyst drivers (latest on ASUS’s site is 3.7 which is too old for my uses
BFG 5700 Ultra running 475/950 MHz core/memory running NVIDIA 52.16 drivers
Windows XP Service Pack 1

Test Software
Halo 1.02 Timedemo
Quake3 Timedemo
3dmark 2003 Build 340
3dmark 2001 SE build 330
Aquamark 3
FFXI Benchmark 2
Dronezmark
UT2003
Serious Sam The Second Encounter Little Trouble benchmark
Gunmetal Benchmark 2 1+2
SpecViewPerf 7.1.1

Gameplay

Real world performance is more important than strict benchmarks. After all, I buy a video card to play games. Video card reviewers have started to get it right over the last year. With the hoopla about Nvidia cheating in 3dmark 2003, I think we’ve forgotten about what makes a good video card. FRAPs is an application that many reviewers have started using in their reviews. But how does a given video card play the games I play? FRAPs is only part of the story. I included game play descriptions of three games I’m currently playing Call Of Duty, Homeworld 2, and Knights Of the Old Republic

Homeworld 2

Sierra released Homeworld in 1999. Homeworld is a space based Real Time Strategy (RTS). The first game was crippled by a weak control scheme. In the game you took control of the Higaran fleet to try and find your homeworld. Homeworld 2 is the sequel to the best selling game Homeworld. In this game you try to survive the Vagr attacks and retake the homeworld that was lost early in the campaign.

Homeworld 2 is an OpenGL based game that requires a fairly medium class of computer hardware today. The minimum requirement is a Pentium III 833 or AMD Athlon 833MHz, 256MB of RAM, a Geforce or better OpenGL 3d accelerator and 1.2GB of hard disk space. The recommended requirements are Pentium 4 1.4GHz or AMD Athlon 1.4 GHz, 64MB Geforce 3 or higher, or Radeon 8500 or better that supports Transform and Lighting, 512MB or higher.

Playing Homeworld 2 on the BFG 5700 Ultra is a wonderful experience. I was able to mostly play the game at 1280x960 with shadows on and all settings to high. While I would have loved to turn on anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering on the 5700 Ultra, performance wasn’t really up to snuff. There were times that the game would slow down a bit at this resolution, but it was mostly playable.

On the ASUS 9600XT, Homeworld 2 was a tiny bit more sluggish at the resolution of 1280x960 but not overly so, and it could have been a hiccup. Turning down the resolution to 1024x768, the game was fully playable. Note, I was playing 6 player deathmatch with both the 5700 Ultra and 9600XT and the game play was mostly identical in terms of performance. Both cards play the game wonderfully, I just prefer the speed of the 5700 Ultra in this game a tiny bit more. Image quality at that resolution was hard to discern, as both cards played the game wonderfully.

Call Of Duty

Call Of Duty is a first person shooter based upon World War II designed by the same people who brought us Medal Of Honor Allied Assault. You take the role of a British, or an American or a Russian soldier in a campaign starting around the time of D-Day, and ending with the fall of Berlin in 1945. Many wonderful missions await the players of the game. If you haven’t picked it up, I strongly suggest you do so.

System requirements for COD are: Pentium III 600 MHz or Athlon 600 MHz processor or higher for systems with Windows 98/ME; Pentium III 700 MHz or Athlon 700 MHz processor or higher for systems with Windows 2000/XP; 128 MB of RAM; Microsoft Windows 98/ME/2000/XP; DirectX 9.0b (included); 3D Hardware Accelerator Card required - 100% DirectX 9.0b compatible 32 MB hardware T & L-capable; DirectX 9.0b compatible 16-bit sound card; 1.4 GB of uncompressed free hard disk space; 8x CD-ROM drive

Playing COD on the 9600XT was a bit problematic at first. Until ATI released a hotfix for the game, this game would crash to the desktop with virtually anyone with an ATI R3xx based video card unless you disabled Fast Writes. ATI has issued a Hot fix that fixes the issue, but it was rather annoying to play the game and have it crash to the desktop without warning before the Hot Fix (I just got the game at the same time I got the 9600XT). Otherwise playing the game on a 9600XT was great. Similar praises can be said for the 5700 Ultra as no crashes during the game occurred, and the game was playable at 1024x768 on both cards.

Knights Of The Old Republic

I’m an avid RPGer (Role Playing Game). The first RPG I played and enjoyed was Ultima II on the Atari 800 way back in 1982 (my first computer at age 15). Other RPGs that have tickled my fancy over the years include Might And Magic, Wizardry for the PC, Final Fantasy VI for the SNES, Morrowind and many others too numerous to count. I’ve also always liked anything to do with science fiction since my earliest memories. I remember watching Star Wars 10 times in the theaters back in the summer of 1977. I was hooked.

Star Wars games on the computers have always held a special place in my heart. I remember playing X-Wing and X-Wing versus Tie Fighter on the computer, where I would pilot a fighter craft against enemy fighters and spaceships. Back then computer graphics weren’t as complicated as today’s space games. There have been bad Star Wars Games, don’t get me wrong (Star Wars: Rebellion for example), but for the most part Star Wars games have been a lot of fun.

So the idea of a computer game based upon the melding of Star Wars and a RPG really excites me. And Knights Of the Old Republic delivers in a big way. In this game you take on the role of a Jedi Knight or Sith to save the Jedi Order or destroy it. It’s one of those fun games that let’s you be either the good guy or a bad guy.

System Requirements are 100% DirectX 9.0b compatible computer, Windows 98/98SE/ME/2000XP, Intel PIII 1 GHz or AMD Athlon 1 GHz required, 128MB RAM required for Windows 98, 256 MB RAM required for Windows ME/2000/XP, 32 MB OpenGL 1.4 compatible PCI or AGP 3D Hardware Accelerator with Hardware Transform and Lighting, 100% DirectX 9.0b compatible Audio Device required, 4x CD-ROM drive required, keyboard and mouse required, DirectX 9.0b included on CD.

The recommended system requirements are 1.6 GHz AMD or Intel processor, ATI Radeon 9200 or Geforce 4 Ti or better, 512 MB RAM.

I was able to play KOTOR on both the ASUS 9600XT and BFG 5700 Ultra very easily at 1024x768 and 1280x960. As the game is a RPG, most of the time battles aren’t very intense. It’s extremely nice to see a modern game look and play like wonderfully. As it’s a port of the Xbox game of the same name, I would have been disappointed if the game played bad on either card.