OCUK ATI RADEON 9700 PRO REVIEW

"In this article we review the OCUK ATI RADEON 9700 PRO video card, featured software includes Half Life 2, Doom3, Quake3, Tribes Vengeance, Unreal Tournament 2004, X2 The Threat and various other popular games software."

GENERAL SYSTEM INFORMATION

PROCESSOR	AMD ATHLON XP 3200
VIDEO CARD	OCUK ATI RADEON 9700 PRO
	MSI GEFORCE 5900 XT
ATI DRIVER	CATALYST v4.11
NVIDIA DRIVER	FORCEWARE v67.03
MOTHERBOARD	ASROCK K7S8XE+
MEMORY	2x 512MB OCZ GOLD XTC PC3200 DDR
OPERATING SYSTEM	WINDOWS XP SERVICE PACK 2
DIRECTX VERSION	v9.0c

RIGHTMARK BETA 4

GEOMETRY PROCESSING SPEED (AMBIENT)

	81
	88

GEOMETRY PROCESSING SPEED (DIFFUSE + SPECULAR)

	22
	61

PIXEL SHADING (PS1.1)

	692
	544

PIXEL SHADING (PS2.0)

	203
	53

POINT SPRITES

	642
	541

OCUK ATI RADEON 9700 PRO MSI GEFORCE 5900 XT

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
1024x768 Resolution
32Bit colour Depth

COMMENT - "The results start off badly for the OCUK ATI Radeon 9700 Pro when it loses both of the first two tests to the MSI GeForce 5900 XT. The OCUK ATI Radeon 9700 Pro lost especially badly with the Diffuse and Specular Geometry test when the MSI GeForce 5900 XT beat it by a huge 64%. After that it was very good news for the OCUK ATI Radeon 9700 Pro when it won all of remaining three tests including the most important pixel shader tests. With the basic pixel shader 1.1 test the OCUK ATI Radeon 9700 Pro manages a good 22% performance increase over the MSI GeForce 5900 XT. The most important test in Rightmark is the Pixel Shader 2.0 test and this test shows the real power of the OCUK ATI Radeon 9700 Pro when it crushes the MSI GeForce 5900 XT by offering a HUGE 74% performance increase. The point sprite test was more of the same and the OCUK ATI Radeon 9700 Pro beat the MSI GeForce 5900 XT by a modest 16%."

DOOM 3

LOW QUALITY

	66
	66

MEDIUM QUALITY

	44
	43

HIGH QUALITY

	23
	31

OCUK ATI RADEON 9700 PRO MSI GEFORCE 5900 XT

COMMENT - "Using the cpu limited low quality setting we see that the OCUK ATI Radeon 9700 Pro and MSI GeForce 5900 XT both perform the same. Using the medium quality setting with most of the high quality effects enabled we see an approx 35% performance drop for both of the video cards. Using the high quality setting with all of the high quality effects enabled and we see the OCUK ATI Radeon 9700 Pro really struggling against the MSI GeForce 5900 XT. The reason for the OCUK ATI Radeon 9700 Pro lack of performance using high quality is the use of shadows. The MSI GeForce 5900 XT uses Nvidia Ultrashadow Technology which helps it render shadows, the OCUK ATI Radeon 9700 Pro doesn't have that technology so it's performance suffers."

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
High Quality
1024x768 Screen Size
Fullscreen Enabled
Vertical Sync Disabled
Demo1 Benchmark

LOW QUALITY
Bump Maps Disabled
Shadows Disabled
Special Effects Disabled
Specular Disabled
Antialiasing Disabled

MEDIUM QUALITY
Bump Maps Enabled
Shadows Disabled
Special Effects Enabled
Specular Enabled
Antialiasing Disabled

HIGH QUALITY
Bump Maps Enabled
Shadows Enabled
Special Effects Enabled
Specular Enabled
Anti-aliasing Enabled

FAR CRY

LOW QUALITY

	79
	73

MEDIUM QUALITY

	52
	48

HIGH QUALITY

	42
	40

HIGH QUALITY (4xAA & 8xAF)

	30
	30

OCUK ATI RADEON 9700 PRO MSI GEFORCE 5900 XT

COMMENT - "The OCUK ATI Radeon 9700 Pro starts off strongly delivering an 8% performance increase over the MSI GeForce 5900 XT. However as we increase the image quality the performance difference drops to 7%, 5% and finally to 0% with both video cards offering equal performance."

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Resolution 1024x768
Anti-Aliasing Disabled
Fullscreen Enabled
Vertical Sync Disabled
Default Render Mode

LOW QUALITY
Texture Quality Low
Bilinear
Anisotropic Filtering 1
Particle Count Low
Special Effects Low
Enviroment Quality Low
Shadow Quality Low
Water Quality Low
Lighting Quality Low

MEDIUM QUALITY
Texture Quality Medium
Trilinear
Anisotropic Filtering 2
Particle Count Medium
Special Effects Medium
Enviroment Quality Medium
Shadow Quality Medium
Water Quality Medium
Lighting Quality Medium

HIGH QUALITY
Texture Quality High
Trilinear
Anisotropic Filtering 4
Particle Count High
Special Effects High
Enviroment Quality High
Shadow Quality High
Water Quality High
Lighting Quality High

HALF LIFE 2

MEDIUM QUALITY

	71
	80

HIGH QUALITY

	59
	71

HIGH QUALITY (4xAA & 8xAF)

	46
	45

OCUK ATI RADEON 9700 PRO MSI GEFORCE 5900 XT

COMMENT - "You might be thinking what amazing results the MSI GeForce 5900 XT delivers compared to the OCUK ATI Radeon 9700 Pro. The problem is that the OCUK ATI Radeon 9700 Pro is using DX9 which improves the water quality and delivers much better looking effects. The MSI GeForce 5900 XT has very poor DX9 performance so the makers of Half Life 2 decided that ALL GeForce video cards should only use DX8. If the MSI GeForce 5900 XT was using DX9 then it's frame rates would be in the mid to high 30's and it would easily be beaten by the OCUK ATI Radeon 9700 Pro."

BENCHMARK SETTINGS

MEDIUM QUALITY
Model Detail Medium
Texture Detail Medium
Water Detail Reflect
Shadow Detail High
Shader Detail High
Trilinear Filtering

HIGH QUALITY
Model Detail High
Texture Detail High
Water Detail Reflect
Shadow Detail High
Shader Detail High
8x Anisotropic Filtering

HALF LIFE 2 EXTRA

COAST05

	45
	47

COAST12

	69
	67

PRISON05

	72
	61

OCUK ATI RADEON 9700 PRO MSI GEFORCE 5900 XT

BENCHMARK SETTINGS

HIGH QUALITY
Model Detail High
Texture Detail High
Water Detail Reflect
Shadow Detail High
Shader Detail High
8x Anisotropic Filtering

COMMENT - "Look at these great results for the OCUK ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, even though it is using DX9 and the MSI GeForce 5900 XT is using DX8 it still manages to beat the MSI GeForce 5900 XT in two out of the three benchmarks. Using the Prison05 benchmark the OCUK ATI Radeon 9700 Pro using DX9 was 16% faster than the MSI GeForce 5900 XT which was using DX8."