Professional Affair: OpenGL Graphics Cards Compete

Pros And Cons

The following table shows a summary of the advantages and disadvantages of the tested cards.

Final Thoughts: Rambus-Pentium Versus SDRAM-Athlon

This test clearly reveals better performance values for RDRAM platforms with the Pentium III. Contrary to the game PC world, the workstation segment finally gives Rambus memory the chance to show off its performance advantages propagated by Intel. In comparison to the Athlon 800 we measured better results in almost all categories at the same clock frequency under Windows NT 4.0.

Some card manufacturers seem to prefer the Pentium III for the driver development. In the application benchmarks the difference is less noticeable than in the synthetic benchmarks. We generally assign more importance to the application benchmarks because they reflect the real-life situation for the user much better. On top of that Nvidia proves that it is possible to optimize graphics card drivers for the Pentium III and Athlon equally.

One point is quite important when deciding on a platform. Workstations are generally equipped with more memory than mainstream PCs. 512 MByte are no rarity. Given today's prices, RDRAM would be much more expensive than the rest of the hardware. In this case the Rambus memory alone adds up to a whopping 5000 Dollars, five times more than PC133 SDRAM. The slight performance disadvantages of the Athlon KX133 platform can be balanced with more MHz. This would be a much wiser investment for your money.