3dfx, Matrox and Nvidia take on the KryoTech Cool Athlon 800MHz – THG.RU

Introduction

Every since we received the KryoTech Cool Athlon 800MHz I’ve been eager to start plugging in various 3D video boards to see what frame rates we could expect with an 800MHz AMD Athlon processor. I decided to take the new 3dfx Voodoo3 3500, the soon to be shipped Matrox G400MAX, and the Hercules Dynamite TNT2 Ultra and put them to the test in our labs fastest system, the KryoTech Cool Athlon 800Mhz system. I was also excited to see if the Matrox G400MAX, which in our previous testing was happiest with faster CPU’s, would leap into the lead given the performance offered by the Athlon processor.

KryoTech Cool Athlon 800MHz takes a licking but keeps on ticking

As I mentioned in our “KryoTech’s Cool Athlon 800MHz” article we promised to hammer on this system during its stay in our lab. This system has had no breaks. I haven’t found any problems with any video board that I have stuck into this system yet. The Voodoo3 3500, Matrox G400MAX and the Hercules Dynamite TNT2 Ultra all ran like a charm in the KryoTech unit.

Test Configuration

Putting the Video boards to the Test

I wanted to include several game titles in our suite of tests to provide an idea of performance under DX6, OpenGL and Glide as for the case of the Voodoo3 board.Our DX6 based testing includes Monolith’s Shogo, Rage’s Expendable, and Interplay’s Descent III.As for the OpenGL and Glide testing the titles include Quake 2, Quake 3 Arena Test, and Descent III.Each of these titles was run and 640×480, 1024×768, and 1600×1200 resolution.I decided to skip describing the details of each of the video boards including the new Voodoo3 3500.We will be posting a comprehensive review describing each of the boards’ respective features.

3D Game Benchmark Results – Shogo

The TNT2 based board holds the lead in each of the resolutions. It is surprising to see the 10FPS lead the TNT2 has at 1024×768 resolution over the second fastest G400MAX. As we expect the G400MAX does pretty good at resolutions above 640×480. The Voodoo3 3500 was unable to run at 1600×1200 resolution hence the 0.0 FPS score.

3D Game Benchmark Results – Expendable 16Bit

The most surprising score I found in these results is the G400MAX results at 1600x1200x16. At this resolution the G400MAX has a whopping 10FPS advantage over the TNT2.

3D Game Benchmark Results – Expendable 32Bit

At resolutions above 640×480 the G400MAX does extremely well in 32Bit modes. At 1600x1200x32 the G400MAX is almost able to average 30 frames per second! The Voodoo3 doesn’t support 32bit color hence the 0.0 FPS scores.

3D Game Benchmark Results – Quake 2 AMD 3DNow! v3.20

Under Quake 2 for the Voodoo3 I renamed the 3DFX.DLL to OPENGL32.DLL in the in the Quake 2 game directory and selected 3DNow! OpenGL in the video settings. Doing this little trick allows the Voodoo3 to use its highly optimized Glide driver. Notice the huge lead the Voodoo3 3500 has over the competition at 640×480 resolutions, almost 10FPS faster! As for the rest of the resolutions the TNT2 and Voodoo3 run a very tight race. The lack of fully optimized OpenGL drivers is apparent given the G400MAX scores. Even though their drivers have been improved by about 25% in Quake 2 they still are significantly behind the competition at the lower resolutions.

3D Game Benchmark Results – Quake 3 Arena Test v1.08 16Bit

In this test I selected Normal settings and only changed the resolution. The “Normal” setting defaults to modest graphics settings including 16Bit color. The TNT2 holds the lead across each of the tested resolutions while the G400MAX and Voodoo3 run a close race at 1024x768x16 and 1600x1200x16. The G400MAX hasn’t a chance at 640x480x16 with its 63.3FPS score, trailing its closest competitor at some 28FPS. However, 63.3FPS is most definitely playable!

3D Game Benchmark Results – Quake 3 Arena Test v1.08 32Bit

In this test I selected High Quality settings and only changed the resolution. The “High Quality” setting defaults to more aggressive graphics settings including 32Bit color. At 1024x768x32 the TNT2 is almost 6FPS faster than the G400MAX. At 1600x1200x32 the G400MAX score climbs closer to the TNT2. Again, at 640×480 the G400MAX is left in the dust even in 32Bit mode! The Voodoo3 doesn’t support 32bit color hence the 0.0 FPS scores.

3D Game Benchmark Results – Descent 3 Retail Version

Different from the other game titles we tested Descent offers 3 different API’s to choose from (DX6, OpenGL, and Glide). I thought comparing each of the various video boards performance across these different API’s, where compatible, would be quite interesting. However, excluding the TNT2 both the G400MAX and Voodoo3 3500 wouldn’t run in some of the API modes Descent had to offer. The G400 wouldn’t run when I selected OpenGL mode in Descent and the Voodoo3 would run through the demo when DX6 or OpenGL modes were selected. At this time I can not point the finger at these two particular video boards until I make sure its not the implementation used by Descent 3. In any case, I provided the results (if there were any) using each of the supported API’s. The last chart shows each of the video boards performance using their respective best performing API.

3D Game Benchmark Results – DirectX

Using the DX6 API the TNT2 enjoys a huge lead while running at 640x480x16 and 1024x768x16 resolution. The G400 pulls ahead by 3 FPS at 1600x1200x16.

3D Game Benchmark Results – OpenGL

Not much to talk about here! For some strange reason the G400MAX was able to run at 640x480x16 but none of the other resolutions. Let’s hope something is broken with Descent implementation of OpenGL given the G400MAX’s horrible 640x480x16 score!

Best API Selected

With each of the cards running their favorite API the Voodoo3 3500 simply kicks booty at the lower resolutions 640x480x16 and 1024x768x16 using the Glide API. The G400MAX and TNT2 run a close race with the TNT2 in the lead at 640x480x16 and the G400MAX scoring the best at 1600x1200x16.

Summary

There’s no doubt about it! A person can’t go wrong using the KryoTech Cool AMD Athlon 800MHz processor with any of the tested video boards. Each of the tested video boards did quite well across the tested suite of game apps. I was surprised to see that the G400MAX’s performance wasn’t leading the pack with the faster Athlon processor. Even though Matrox did some fine work increasing their OpenGL performance by some 25%, they still need to squeeze out some more to stay competitive using OpenGL based game applications. Knowing that the next generation 3D chips will incorporate highly efficient geometry engines, it will be interesting to see if a high speed Athlon offers any benefit when using a 3D chip that incorporates on-board geometry setup.