GIGABYTE RADEON 9000 REVIEW

"Gigabyte Radeon 9000 review comparing the Gigabyte Radeon 9000 to the Gainward GeForce4 MX 440. Software used for testing was:- 3dmark 2001 SE, Dronez, Max Payne, Mercedes Benz Truck Racing, Quake 3, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Serious Sam, Star Trek Voyager Elite Force, Star Wars Jedi Knight 2 - Jedi Outcast, Unreal Tournament and Unreal Tournament 2003."

MAYA GV-R9000 PLUS(AF64DGE) provides high-end performance to the mainstream graphics market at a competitive price point. MAYA serial features four parallel, highly optimized rendering pipelines usually available only for the high-end gaming cards that significantly enhance performance and game-play responsiveness by doubling the pixel fill rate compared to the standard 2-pipeline architectures found in most mid-range products.

COMMENT - "The Gigabyte Radeon 9000 wins this test simply because it was full DX8.1 features which are important for future gaming performance. It's unusual to see a budget video card with these features, the Gainward GeForce4 MX 440 is missing pixel shaders and although the Xabre by SIS has hardware pixel shaders it only has software vertex shaders. The Gainward GeForce4 MX 440 puts in a good performance when you consider it's missing pixel shaders which means it's unable to run the nature test. The Gainward GeForce4 MX 440 always performs the high polygon count tests very well so I wasn't surprised to see it beat the Gigabyte Radeon 9000."

MAX PAYNE 640x480 108 94 800x600 83 82 1024x768 59 63 1280x960 40 54 GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX 440 GIGABYTE RADEON 9000 BENCHMARK SETTINGS Shooting Alex Benchmark High Quality Setting Trilinear Filtering Fogging Enabled Sounds Enabled Task Switching Disabled Triple Screen Buffers Enabled COMMENT - "The Gainward GeForce4 MX 440 starts off strongly which indicates it has strong hardware t&l but as the resolutions increase the Gigabyte Radeon 9000 takes over."

MERCEDES BENZ TRUCK RACING 640x480 143 78 800x600 128 70 1024x768 98 59 1280x960 68 51 GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX 440 GIGABYTE RADEON 9000 BENCHMARK SETTINGS Triple Buffering Enabled Reflections Enabled High Resolution Textures Enabled 24Bit Textures Enabled Alpha Textures Enabled Mipmapping Enabled Sound FX Enabled COMMENT - "Things change dramatically with Mercedes Truck Racing which is dominated by the performance shown by the Gainward GeForce4 MX 440. I can only assume that the poor performance shown at all resolutions by the Gigabyte Radeon 9000 is down to poor driver support for this game."

UNREAL TOURNAMENT 640x480 121 119 800x600 119 116 1024x768 109 113 1280x960 82 111 GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX 440 GIGABYTE RADEON 9000 BENCHMARK SETTINGS Thunder Benchmark 32Bit Colour Depth High World Texture Detail High Skin Detail Show Decals Enabled Dynamic Lighting Enabled Minimum Frame Rate 0 COMMENT - "The Gainward GeForce4 MX 440 wins the lower resolutions however the Gigabyte Radeon 9000 wipes the floor with the Gainward GeForce4 MX 440 at two highest resolutions. The Gigabyte Radeon 9000 managed to achieve atleast 100fps at ALL of the resolutions which is very impressive for a budget video card."

UNREAL TOURNAMENT 2003 ANTALUS 38 36 ANUBIS 54 51 ASBESTOS 48 46 CITADEL 42 41 GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX 440 GIGABYTE RADEON 9000 BENCHMARK SETTINGS 1024x768 Resolution Character Shadows Enabled Decals Enabled Dynamic Lighting Enabled Detail Textures Enabled Projectors Enabled Foliage Enabled COMMENT - "Things swing back into the Gainward GeForce4 MX 440's favour again as it beats the Gigabyte Radeon 9000 using all of the four benchmarks, the difference however is only 2-4fps which isn't noticeable."