[J3Vr6]

I bought an ATI 9600 xt 256MB on Sunday and what a kick-ass difference it made. I haven't tested it on any games yet, but I ran 3dmark2001se before and after the installation. The specs:

1024x768, 32-bit
amd 2400 running at 2000 mhz
512 MB DDR 1600 memory
hard-drive filled to the rim.
Win 98se

With no AAF, my geforce 2mmx 32mb score was 2,427  Lousy, the tests looked somewhat choppy on some and maybe 5 out of the 17 tests couldn't be done b/c the hardware didn't support those features.

I installed the 9600xt and ran the test again with the stock driver that came with the card. With no AAF, my ati 9600xt score shot up to 10,376!!! I installed the latest cat drivers from ATI and tried again, the score actually lowered to 10,285. Not much of a difference but why lower?

For ****s and giggles, I tried it with AAF x 4 (no idea what this does but the test demos looked a little cleaner) and my score was 7,505.  The demos looked a lot cleaner, lines looks more defined, but the framerates dropped in each of the demo games.

Anyway, I thought I'd share

[Sandwich]

AAF rocks. Here's what it is: http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20000427/geforce2-08.html

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by J3Vr6

I installed the 9600xt and ran the test again with the stock driver that came with the card. With no AAF, my ati 9600xt score shot up to 10,376!!! I installed the latest cat drivers from ATI and tried again, the score actually lowered to 10,285. Not much of a difference but why lower?
 

Gfx card manufacturers have a habit of fixing graphics card drivers to cheat on benchmarks... it's possible that the newer ones had these removed (scandal!), or that these, er, optimizations were targeted at a newer version of 3dmark than 2001. (whereas the stock ones were probably a fair bit older and more likely to be aimed at an earlier version of 3dmark)

[J3Vr6]

I have no idea if the 10k score is high or not, it was the first time I used 3dmark.  But I know there's a big difference between that and the 2k that the geforce gave me.

Next I'm getting faster memory and maybe overclocking.  Not sure if that's gonna make a difference in 3dmark, though.

[Taristin]

heh. I use that card and my duron 600, and single channel 128 MB PC2100 ram... I scored 1356.

I'm going to buy a 2700/2800 and 1gig of ram and see how much that improves...

[Setekh]

Man, that's some good stuff you're getting into. Why is everyone upgrading lately?

[Flipside]

I think mainly so we can play Freespace Open or Doom 3

[Taristin]

both are equally resource intensive.

[pyro-manic]

Half Life is coming....

[J3Vr6]

Originally posted by pyro-manic
Half Life is coming....

That, and I finally want to be able to play games that are actual "new releases."  I was getting tired of shopping the value bin at computer stores, looking for old games that would run on my system.

[castor]

Originally posted by J3Vr6
With no AAF, my ati 9600xt score shot up to 10,376!!! I installed the latest cat drivers from ATI and tried again, the score actually lowered to 10,285. Not much of a difference but why lower?

A drop of 1 % ?
Thats probably normal fluctuation between the test rounds.
Give it another try, you might get more (or even less.. )

[J3Vr6]

I'll try it when I get home.  One thing I did notice between the newest catalyst drivers and the ones that came with the card was that there seemed to be issues kinda like the SCP had of textures rending over other stuff (like there was a truck chase scene and the truck fires a missle at an aircraft and the thruster glow would skip infront of the missle texture (or vice versa)).

But those were cleared up with the latest catalyst drivers...