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The Test Bed
| Processor | 2.0GHz Intel Pentium 4 "Northwood" |
| Motherboard | ASUS P4S533 |
| Memory | One 1GB PC2700 DDR SDRAM module (2.5-3-3-7) |
| Hard Disks | 20GB Seagate Barracuda IDE hard disk (7200 RPM, 2MB cache) |
| Graphics Card | GeCube Radeon 9600XT |
| Operating System | Microsoft Windows XP Professional with SP1 |
Many gamers are not able to afford (or simply choose not to have) the latest and most powerful hardware, and I am one of them. This test also doubles up as an illustration of how the latest games like Doom 3 and Half Life 2 will perform on a mid-range gaming PC.
The Benchmarks
- Doom 3
- Counter-Strike: Source
- 3DMark 2001 SE (build 330)
- 3DMark 2003 (build 340)
- Aquamark 3
The games used for benchmarking were Doom 3 and the newly- released CS: Source. For curiosity's sake, I also used three synthetic benchmarks - 3DMark01 SE, 3DMark03 and Aquamark 3. Aquamark yielded some intriguing results, as you will see later on.
The Drivers
ATI's Catalyst 4.9 and 4.10 was used for this comparison. Catalyst 4.10 features a new Catalyst Control Centre with what ATI calls "Catalyst AI". This new feature apparently makes use of application-specific optimizations to improve frame rates.
However, the Catalyst AI proved to be of no help in the benchmarks (performance actually decreased slightly in Doom 3). Hence, all results in this comparison are those of Catalyst 4.10 without Catalyst AI. It could be that the AI only helps in actual gameplay and not benchmarks, or perhaps it only yields improved results with superior hardware.
As explained earlier, I am using Omega 2.5.90 on Standard OpenGL, fast write off, and no softmodding options. Special OpenGL results will be included where available.
Test Procedures
All factors were kept constant during the testing - monitor refresh at 75Hz, desktop resolution synchronised with game resolution, colour depth at 32 bit, and normal background applications running. All benchmarks ran three times, outliers (scores that were unusually high or low) removed and the average score calculated. Let's take a look at the results.
