Facelift: The ATi Radeon 9600 XT

Aquamark 3

This is Massive Development's new DirectX 9 benchmark. If you'd like to learn more about this benchmark, feel free to read the Aquamark 3 article . The current NVIDIA v45.23 had issues with lighting and shows in AquaMark3. This is fixed in the new v52.16 driver release :

Note: Since NVIDIA's driver v45.23 does not display all of the effects used in this benchmark correctly, scores recorded with this driver are shown in gray.

AM3 shows ATi in the lead. The scores achieved with NVIDIA's newer drivers show that the company is already putting effort into optimizing the driver for this test. The 9600 XT's higher clockspeed compared to the Pro shines through whenever pixel shaders are used.