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Q3 2004 High-End GPU/VPU Shootout (AGP) |
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Written by Mavke
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Monday, 25 October 2004 |
Hardware Zone has put up and article around the High-End CPU/VPU of the 3rd quater of 2004. Quarter two of 2004 saw both ATI and NVIDIA, the two most prominent graphics processor companies, launch their next generation graphics chips to propel upcoming games to the next level of interactivity and realism. NVIDIA first unleashed their NV40 GPU that is now used in their GeForce 6800 series, while ATI unraveled their R420 VPU a few weeks after, which is now incorporated in their X800 series of products.
 Q3 2004 High-End GPU/VPU Shootout (AGP)
Well, we have discussed quite a bit of the best AGP gaming cards money can offer and although the GeForce 6800 series might seem more future proof with a complete Shader Model 3.0 implementation, games that embrace it are still a while away. Meanwhile, looking into existing games and benchmarks, both ATI and NVIDIA have come out victors in
their own price categories indicating that both vendors have excellent products where image quality and performance counts. If you are shopping for a graphics
card with a specific game requirement in mind, do check our results prior to making your decision. For example, the GeForce 6800 series reigns all around in Doom 3, but if you are more of an Unreal fan, then the ATI Radeon X800 series is your ultimate ticket to fragging.
In terms of drivers and compatibility, we
did note that NVIDIA's ForceWare 6x.xx drivers were unable to run the Gun Metal benchmark on any of our AGP based GeForce 6800 graphics cards. However, this wasn't the case with other NVIDIA AGP graphics cards and as
well as the PCIe platform where we faced no issues at all. What we observed was most definitely a minor bug waiting to be fixed in future driver releases. ATI wasn't spared from problems either with its earlier Catalyst drivers. The Radeon X800 series simply refused
to run Futuremark's 3DMark03 Pro and Aquamark 3 on an Intel D875PBZ motherboard, but it
would gladly work on any other i875P motherboard. Thankfully, the Catalyst 4.8 drivers used for our testing resolved this issue. So driver issues are really
not a problem these days, but if you are simply paranoid about them, NVVIDIA's ForceWare drivers have a
more consistent record of being trouble free as far as compatibility issues are concerned.
Should a graphics card's heat output be a major concern,
especially for those integrating small form factor systems, our temperature testing has clearly highlighted the advantage that NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 series offer.
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