Mid Range Graphics Card CPU scaling

For mid-range cards we've got three from ATI and one from NVIDIA; as we've discovered in previous Half Life 2 articles, NVIDIA's last-generation mid-range cards are only reasonable performers in DirectX 8 mode, and we are conducting a fully DX9 comparison here so that excludes all of them. From ATI we've got the Radeon 9700 Pro, Radeon 9800 Pro and Radeon X700 Pro. We've also included the NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT, which as you will remember from our previous articles, performs very similarly to the GeForce 6800 non-ultra under Half Life 2.

Our mid-range tests were conducted at 1280 x 1024, the target resolution for most mid-range cards.

If you've got any of ATI's mid-range GPUs, you're stuck with severely diminishing returns after about 1.4 - 1.6GHz on the Athlon 64 (< 2800+ range). The GeForce 6600GT is far less GPU bound at 1280 x 1024 (and even at 1024 x 768 although not depicted here), and thus scales relatively well.

High End Graphics Card CPU Scaling Final Words
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  • drinkmorejava - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link

    When they test the Athlon 64 3400+, is it the 1meg clawhammer or the 512k newcastle. In comparisons with my friend who has a lousy newcastle with dual channel, he is always thoroughly beaten by my clawhammer.
  • drinkmorejava - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link

  • Zebo - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link

    I wish y'all would do an expo of A64's incredible "feels faster" syndrome to to it's 1/3rd mem latency of all other platforms.
  • bob661 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link

    #44
    Where can you buy it? Especially when MSI's website makes no mention of this.
  • Dranzerk - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link

    #43

    Yes that is feature feature. MSI offers it, never saw it reviewed though.
  • miketheidiot - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link

    #40, 42, their was talk a while back about a PCIe to agp adaptor. Not sure what happened with it though.
  • bob661 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link

    #39
    The MSI board has no such feature. It would require a different MCP to get AGP to work or using one of the PCI slots to do it (which wouldn't be AGP).
  • bob661 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link

    #20
    I have some OCZ CAS3 DDR400 ram in my system. 7 months ago it was considered premium ram (it's EB3500).
  • Aquila76 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link

    #39 - WTF are you talking about? nForce 4 is only PCIe. What page are you looking at? I went through MSI's site and nothing on the Neo4 page says anything about AGP. There is no AGP slot on the mobo either. If you clcik on 'Special Features' that is for the special features of all of MSI's products.
  • Dranzerk - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link

    18 - Posted on Jan 26, 2005 at 12:35 PM by Phantronius said:
    "NF4 will not be supporting AGP bud, sorry, its PCI-E from here on out."

    It does with a addon card..
    http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?Pr...

    MSI K8N neo4 Platnium NF4
    GO to manufactor website listed on speical features:
    Special Features:
    ATX Form Factor
    Supports Accelerated Graphic Port (AGP) Add-On Card

    AGP on a NF4 tata!

    :D

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