ATI Radeon (and others) comparison

[TheJackal]

Here is a useful site that shows the performance of different gfx cards. Handy if you want to see what Radeon you want to get with your AmigaOne. :-P

[that_punk_guy]

Is this what you mean?

;-)

Edit: TheJackal has now fixed his URL.

So... what are we all having for tea tonight?

[TheJackal]

by that_punk_guy on 2003/10/29 16:54:53

Is this what you mean?

Bugger.

Yeah me stupid:crazy:  

[Animagic]

Although it doesn't seem to be the fastest, I would definately bought a Matrox Parhelia.

Rock steady!

(besides, i dont play games  :-D )

[legion]

I'll stick with the Radeon 7500 until a game is developed for Amiga that can actually utilize it's 3-D GPU.  Which is why I'm opting for the Micro A1 when it is released (assuming its priced reasonably).

As you'll notice, the 7500 handily beats even a Voodoo 5.  :-)

[Cymric]

Besides, the CPUs in the AmigaOne have too little muscle to supply a modern high-performance video card with sufficient data in a given time frame. In other words: the CPU is likely going to hold the video card back, performance wise. Since you can get quite good deals on older Radea, my suggestion would be to shop wisely ;-).

[SHADES]

A G4 should have plenty of muscle for any ATI graphics card.
May have some bandwith problems on the 2x AGP port and I think the memory is only SDRAM. DDR would be much better and 4X AGP would suffice nicely. I don't know any cards thant reqire the bandwith of an 8x AGP card.

[Hammer]

SHADES wrote:
A G4 should have plenty of muscle for any ATI graphics card.
May have some bandwith problems on the 2x AGP port and I think the memory is only SDRAM. DDR would be much better and 4X AGP would suffice nicely. I don't know any cards thant reqire the bandwith of an 8x AGP card.

For UT2003 benchmarks and PPC G4 @1.4Ghz PowerMacs performance with ATI Radeon 9800 refer to http://www.barefeats.com/p4game.html

It also shows that the CPUs has influence some in FPS scores.

The G5 @1.8Ghz with Radeon 9600 VS G5 1.6Ghz with Radeon 9800 indicates that the slower CPU is the CPU is holding the Radeon 9800’s potential.

PS; Ignore X86 scores since it’s outside this topic’s context.  But for completeness, refer to a similar UT2003 benchmark @ 1024x768 for AthlonXP 2500+/nForce2 @DDR333 FSB http://www.kickassgear.com/Reviews/NV%20vs%20ATI.htm

[Rogue]

Cymric wrote:
Besides, the CPUs in the AmigaOne have too little muscle to supply a modern high-performance video card with sufficient data in a given time frame. In other words: the CPU is likely going to hold the video card back, performance wise. Since you can get quite good deals on older Radea, my suggestion would be to shop wisely ;-).

A G4 at one gigahertz will have more than enough for that. Apart, the modern graphics card is there to take work away from the CPU. That's the whole friggin' point of having vertex and pixel shaders.

[Karlos]

Mmmm shader-centric graphics .... aghghhghhhh ... drool

[mantisspider]

i just played Max Payne 2 on my ATI A3, big jerky on the screens full of fog. but i had settings on high-ish and only probs was on big foggy screens.

Vice City is flawless, so is Mafia. HomeWorld 2 moans about incompatible graphic card but runs like a dream.

Old ATI still is a million times better than any Voodoo :-D IMO

[SHADES]

@Hammer
Yes, some influence. Which would be minimal. Everything increases including the fetch and refresh of memory. Athlon 2.6 Vs 3.0  also has "influence" on framerate. Front side buss to memory etc when CPU handles other "aspects" of games. Of course there is a difference. But that's not to do with graphics card.

The 3D GPU of "todays graphics cards" is designed to take graphics manipulation /calculation AWAY from the CPU, so that the CPU can do other things like run the game,  leaving the grapics to the GPU. That's the whole point.
AGP is part of PCI spec developed to handle the larger data bandwidth needed for graphics that PCI was lagging in. AGP8x is the new AGP3.0 spec.
I will say again, the G4 CPU has more than enough power.

The only thing that may pose a problem is bandwidth for the graphics card. AGP2x is getting a bit dated. AGP8x would be overkill for now, but not too much longer.
8x doesn't nessecerily  mean 8x faster graphics, just bandwidth. There is a difference and yes it can impact.
 Don't be too surprised to see AGP16x soon.

Specs for AGP and bandwidth are easy to find if your interested. Try google.

[Hammer]

@SHADES

Yes, some influence. Which would be minimal.

I wouldn't say the influence is minimal in regards to FPS score.

I have tested Geforce 4 TI 4600 (AGP4X) with MSI-6330 (VIA KT133A) V3.6 via a range of CPUs i.e.
1. Athlon TBird 1.1 Ghz, DDR266 FSB, 512Mb PC133.  
2. Athlon TBird 1.33 Ghz, DDR266 FSB, 512Mb PC133.
2. Athlon XP ~1.5 Ghz, DDR266 FSB, 512Mb PC133.  
4. Athlon XP ~1.6 Ghz**, DDR266 FSB, 512Mb PC133.  

Then again for, but with ASUS AN78X Deluxe V2.0 (nForce2 400 Ultra)***.
1. Athlon XP* ~1.1 Ghz****, DDR266 FSB, 512MB/1GB PC2100.
1. Athlon XP* ~1.5 Ghz, DDR266 FSB, 512MB/1GB PC2100.
2. Athlon XP* ~2.1 Ghz, DDR266 FSB, 512MB/1GB PC2100.
3. Athlon XP* ~2.09 Ghz, DDR333 FSB, 512MB/1GB PC2700.
4. Athlon XP* ~2.2 Ghz, DDR400 FSB, 512MB/1GB PC3200.

* Barton core was not used in the test i.e. only with TBred-B or/and TBred-A cores.
** With MSI-6330 (VIA KT133A) V5.0. MSI-6330 (VIA KT133A) V3.6 can run Athlon XP 1900+ unofficially (with luck).

*** Plan to test with Gigabyte's GA-7N400PRO2 (nForce2 400 Ultra) some time in the future.
**** I do have access to multiplier unlocked Athlons to conduct the tests for lower Mhz speeds (i.e. down to ~800Mhz).  

Everything increases including the fetch and refresh of memory. Athlon 2.6 Vs 3.0 also has "influence" on framerate.

Athlon 2.6?? Have you done some test yourself i.e. establish a common HW platform with different CPU speeds?

Front side buss to memory etc when CPU handles other "aspects" of games. Of course there is a difference. But that's not to do with graphics card.

Of course it’s has nothing to do with graphic card i.e. the issue about "influence" refers to CPU.  

[ksk]

Cymric wrote:
Besides, the CPUs in the AmigaOne have too little muscle to supply a modern high-performance video card with sufficient data in a given time frame. In other words: the CPU is likely going to hold the video card back, performance wise. Since you can get quite good deals on older Radea, my suggestion would be to shop wisely ;-).

I disagree.

More modern GFX cards take the load off from the CPU (and GFX card memory takes the load off from the AGP bus), therefore  Radeon 8500 (with lot of memory) is minimum for me for A1 machines.

Recently I saw 350Mhz machine tested against multi Ghz machine. the 350Mhz machine (when given a good GFX card) could reach very playable framerates, even though the multi Ghz machine had more FPS. ((and I have seen several tests where the difference between AGP2x/4x/8x have been only a few FPS when all textures fit in GFX card memory))

[TheJackal]

Generally modern gfx cards do transform and lighting in hardware. Thus they have the vertex/index buffers (the geometry) and textures all loaded up into the gfx cards vram at start. Thus the bus only has to cope with instructions on what to do with the geometry, not the actual verts as you would if the CPU did the transform and lighting.

Of course if you start doing dynamic geometry textures on the CPU this changes the situation. Although with vertex/pixel shaders you can do a lot on the GPU.