Attacking the GeForce2 MX: ATi's Radeon 32 MB SDRAM

Benchmark Results: Quake 3 Arena

At 'NORMAL' settings, i.e. 16-bit High Color, all Radeon cards have weaknesses compared to the GeForce2 chips, which is due to the 3D engine. It is remarkable that the high-end version of the Radeon with 64 MB memory (see yellow bar) only reaches frames rates that already its mainstream competitor GeForce2 MX from NVIDIA is able to produce.

In games the trend goes to 32 bits of color depth. HIGH QUALITY slows down the GeForce2 MX due to its bad memory bandwidth. Comparing the Radeon 32 MB SDR to 16-bit the performance delta is less than with the MX. Therefore, the Radeon is slightly ahead of the MX.

Uwe Scheffel