Benchmarks from upgrade: Ti4200 => 5900XT, if anyone is interested

There has been a lot of people asking about upgrades from Ti cards, so
I thought I would post my results.

System: Dell Dimension 4550, P4 2.53Ghz, 512mb RAM
Cards: OEM Nvidia Ti4200 64MB; eVGA FX5900XT 128MB
Driver: 61.77

The only two games that I have that will benchmark are Quake3 Arena
(dated I know) and UT2003.
--------------------------------------
Quake 3, Highest Quality, no sound, 1024x768, no patches installed
Ti4200 64MB
Demo001 210.0 fps
Demo002 222.6 fps

5900XT 128MB
Demo001 248.5 +18% improvement
Demo002 247.2 +11%
--------------------------------------
UT2003 benchmarking utility, latest patch, 1

024x768

Ti4200 64MB
Flyby 130.04
Botmatch 53.88

5900XT 128MB
Flyby 165.21 +27% improvement
Botmatch 56.16 +4%
--------------------------------------
[H]ardOCP UT2K3 Benchmarker, high quality, 1024x768
maps: dm-antalus, dom-suntemple, dm-phobos2, dm-inferno, ctf-face3,
ctf-citadel, dm-asbestos

Ti4200 64MB (all tests averaged)
92.44

5900XT 128MB (all tests averaged)
141.3 +53% improvement

RESULTS: Most of the benchmarks are underimpressive. I'm not really
sure why the [H]ardOCP benchmarker shows such a drastic improvement while
the other benchmarks do not, but the [H] benchmarker runs 7 maps and
probably gives a better indicator of performance. If I had cranked the
resolution up I think there would have been a more drastic difference on
all benchmarks but 1024x768 is what I play at so that is what I tested at.
I suppose that at that resolution, my system is CPU bottlenecked.

I was able to crank the quality settings to maximum in Call of Duty,
before it would chug a bit with everything maxed. I have demos installed
of Far Cry, Halo & UT2K4, but I haven't tried them with the new card.

Overall I am happy, the TV-out seems a tad bit sharper with the 5900xt
but without side-by-side comparisons it a tough call.
--
Mac Cool

Mac Cool wrote:
There has been a lot of people asking about upgrades from Ti cards, so
I thought I would post my results.

System: Dell Dimension 4550, P4 2.53Ghz, 512mb RAM
Cards: OEM Nvidia Ti4200 64MB; eVGA FX5900XT 128MB
Driver: 61.77

The only two games that I have that will benchmark are Quake3 Arena
(dated I know) and UT2003.
--------------------------------------
Quake 3, Highest Quality, no sound, 1024x768, no patches installed
Ti4200 64MB
Demo001 210.0 fps
Demo002 222.6 fps

5900XT 128MB
Demo001 248.5 +18% improvement
Demo002 247.2 +11%
--------------------------------------
UT2003 benchmarking utility, latest patch, 1

024x768

Ti4200 64MB
Flyby 130.04
Botmatch 53.88

5900XT 128MB
Flyby 165.21 +27% improvement
Botmatch 56.16 +4%
--------------------------------------
[H]ardOCP UT2K3 Benchmarker, high quality, 1024x768
maps: dm-antalus, dom-suntemple, dm-phobos2, dm-inferno, ctf-face3,
ctf-citadel, dm-asbestos

Ti4200 64MB (all tests averaged)
92.44

5900XT 128MB (all tests averaged)
141.3 +53% improvement

RESULTS: Most of the benchmarks are underimpressive. I'm not really
sure why the [H]ardOCP benchmarker shows such a drastic improvement while
the other benchmarks do not, but the [H] benchmarker runs 7 maps and
probably gives a better indicator of performance. If I had cranked the
resolution up I think there would have been a more drastic difference on
all benchmarks but 1024x768 is what I play at so that is what I tested at.
I suppose that at that resolution, my system is CPU bottlenecked.

I was able to crank the quality settings to maximum in Call of Duty,
before it would chug a bit with everything maxed. I have demos installed
of Far Cry, Halo & UT2K4, but I haven't tried them with the new card.

Overall I am happy, the TV-out seems a tad bit sharper with the 5900xt
but without side-by-side comparisons it a tough call.

Far Cry, Thief 3, Deus Ex 2 and most newer games will offer you a huge
improvement. The more shaders, the more pain for your Ti 4200.
"UT2K3" shouldn't be used as a benchmark anymore. It's not as
significant as it was two years ago. And it's absolutely ridiculous
to compare any modern cards with Quake III when we have frame-rates
measured in three digit numbers. "Doom 3" and "Far Cry" are very good
games to see whether it's necessary to upgrade the old Ti 4 serie
cards.

(Nada) said:

Far Cry, Thief 3, Deus Ex 2 and most newer games will offer you a huge
improvement.

I fired up the Far Cry demo, changed the settings from medium to high and
it was unplayable. I don't know if the retail version is better optimized
but I'm not very impressed with the performance of the demo.

UT2K4, which previously chugged, played smooth even with all the settings
cranked up. The graphics look damn good too.
--
Mac Cool

"Mac Cool" wrote in message
...
(Nada) said:

Far Cry, Thief 3, Deus Ex 2 and most newer games will offer you a huge
improvement.

I fired up the Far Cry demo, changed the settings from medium to high and
it was unplayable. I don't know if the retail version is better optimized
but I'm not very impressed with the performance of the demo.

UT2K4, which previously chugged, played smooth even with all the settings
cranked up. The graphics look damn good too.
--
Mac Cool

The *patched* version of retail FarCry runs really well on high settings on
a 5900XT. The demo and CD versions were slower.

Alan

Try Aquamark. Hee hee!


--
Ed Light

Smiley :-/
MS Smiley :-\

Send spam to the FTC at

Thanks, robots.

"Alan Wright" wrote:
"Mac Cool" wrote:
(Nada) said:

Far Cry, Thief 3, Deus Ex 2 and most newer games will offer you a huge
improvement.

I fired up the Far Cry demo, changed the settings from medium to high and
it was unplayable. I don't know if the retail version is better optimized
but I'm not very impressed with the performance of the demo.

UT2K4, which previously chugged, played smooth even with all the settings
cranked up. The graphics look damn good too.
--
Mac Cool

The *patched* version of retail FarCry runs really well on high settings on
a 5900XT. The demo and CD versions were slower.

Alan

If the games run good, and the minimum frame-rates are over 50 fps
with the slowest models, I wouldn't consider them good benchmarks
anymore. A sign of a good benchmark isn't how well it's able to run,
but to see a clear difference on the minimum/average frame-rates by
using a heavily implemented shader software. The difference between
Ti 4200 and 5900 XT should be at least 30 percent to make it a decent
upgrade. I'm pretty sure that the gap is round about that. The
minimum frame-rates doubled in "Deus Ex 2". Being able to play it on
20 instead of 10 was really a huge improvement. It was impossible to
aim precisely with my old Ti 4200 at 1024 x 768 resolution. 5900 XT
was clearly the best buy last spring.

Most likely Far cry just an eye candy game with far less efficient engine
compares to UT2k4. And obviously it has a deal with ATI to intensively using
shaders, the weakest point of nvidia fx cause the difference between
24bit(ATI) and 32bit(nvidia) full floatpoint precision, to beat the FX
series to death. This was also proofed that FX has sharper graphic then ATI
in far cry. I can't see too much difference between the graphic effect of
these two games. The scenes displayed in Far cry is simply too colorful to
be realistic.



"Mac Cool" wrote in message
...
(Nada) said:

Far Cry, Thief 3, Deus Ex 2 and most newer games will offer you a huge
improvement.

I fired up the Far Cry demo, changed the settings from medium to high and
it was unplayable. I don't know if the retail version is better optimized
but I'm not very impressed with the performance of the demo.

UT2K4, which previously chugged, played smooth even with all the settings
cranked up. The graphics look damn good too.
--
Mac Cool

Most likely Far cry just an eye candy game with far less efficient engine
compares to UT2k4. And obviously it has a deal with ATI to intensively using
shaders, the weakest point of nvidia fx cause the difference between
24bit(ATI) and 32bit(nvidia) full floatpoint precision, to beat the FX
series to death. This was also proofed that FX has sharper graphic then ATI
in far cry. I can't see too much difference between the graphic effect of
these two games. The scenes displayed in Far cry is simply too colorful to
be realistic.


"Mac Cool" wrote in message
...
(Nada) said:

Far Cry, Thief 3, Deus Ex 2 and most newer games will offer you a huge
improvement.

I fired up the Far Cry demo, changed the settings from medium to high and
it was unplayable. I don't know if the retail version is better optimized
but I'm not very impressed with the performance of the demo.

UT2K4, which previously chugged, played smooth even with all the settings
cranked up. The graphics look damn good too.
--
Mac Cool