The Benchmark Results - Descent3 OpenGL
Here we have shockingly higher results between the DDR and higher clocked SDR boards in the line-up. Boosting the core speeds netted very little while the memory settings boosted performance very well. Take a peek at the SDR board at 120/166 vs. the SDR board at 145/166. Note how we gained a minor .9 FPS using the higher speed core over base configuration while we gained 4.2 FPS gain when putting the memory from 166 MHz to 183 MHz. The SDR board gains practically nothing from advancing core but gains almost 10% by turning up the memory speed. Now wander over to the DDR board and note how it actually gains a few frames from the over-clocked core speed. The basic rule of thumb here is that you need to overcome the memory bandwidth problem before upping the core speed does you any good. Again, the Matrox and Voodoo3 boards wouldn't run Descent 3 in OpenGL mode.
The SDR and DDR GeForce boards both gain some ground when boosting the memory speed. Of course we expected this for the SDR board but it's still a surprise to see the DDR is still bottlenecked by the memory performance.
