Overclocking
Finding the best setting for each card was gone by cycling Quake3 demo1 overnight. The temperature was taken at the end of the testing run when I checked to see if the system was still running. Both cards found their happiest setting at 135 MHz core/333 MHz memory running Quake3 all night like a champ. Anything more and I had unstable results within the first few minutes. Both also registered a 76 degree Celsius heat rating that was measured on the backside of the graphics chip. Results will vary card to card so don't be surprised if you can exceed the rather modest settings I achieved.
Benchmark Setup
| Hardware Information | |
|---|---|
| CPU | PIII 866 |
| Motherboard (BIOS rev.) | Intel OR840 (BIOS OR840700.86E.0219.803.0003081415) |
| Memory | 2 Modules of 128 MB 800 MHz RDRAM |
| Network | Netgear FA310TX |
| Driver Information | |
| 3dfx Voodoo3 3500 | 4.12.01.1222 |
| Asus AGP-V6800 Deluxe | 4.12.01.0375 |
| Creative Labs Annihilator Pro | 4.12.01.2204.02.0353 |
| Matrox G400 MAX | 4.12.01.1520 |
| S3 Viper II | 4.12.01.9002-9.10.21 |
| Environment Settings | |
| OS Version | Windows 98 SE 4.10.2222 A |
| DirectX Version | 7.0 |
| Quake 3 Arena | Retail versioncommand line = +set cd_nocd 1 +set s_initsound 0 |
| Shogo | V2.14Advanced Settings = disable sound, disable music, disable movies, disable joysticks,enable optimized surfaces, enable triple buffering, enable single-pass multi-texturingHigh Detail Settings = enabledFortress Demo |
| Descent III | Retail versionSettings = -nosound -nomusic -nonetwork -timetest |
| 3DMark 2000 | 16-bit settings = 16 bit textures, 16-bit Z-buffer, triple buffering32-bit settings = 32-bit textures, 24-bit Z-buffer, triple bufferingAll test were done with high detail only. |
Benchmark Expectations And Notes
I expect both GeForce based cards to dominate the tests over the competing chipsets (notice we used the latest drivers) and that the Asus V6800 will have a slight advantage as its driver is based on a reference driver that is quiet a bit newer than what the Creative Labs Annihilator Pro comes with. This advantage may be more apparent in some resolution more than others.
You've probably noticed by now that we've upped our test platform to something much more powerful than before. As far as graphics card concerned, this platform is the best test bed for comparing graphic boards as it provides the latest AGP technologies and supports the fastest available processors. This choice was made to offer pure graphics analysis. Future articles may offer supplemental information that will compare the effects of slower platforms on various graphics solutions but from now on, our standard graphics test suite will use this platform.
Much of our test suite is getting a bit dated as most of the boards are able to achieve very high framerates in various tests so I've removed a few that I felt were way too easy. Keep an eye out for an addition to our benchmark suite next review, as we'll most likely have an addition or two from recently released games.
