LOSTCIRCUITS

Old Style Graphics: DX8 and 3DMark2001SE

In many ways, 3DMark2001 and its second edition have been the highpoint of Futuremark benchmark releases. Despite its ripe age of almost 5 years now, there is still quite a bit of life in 3DM2001SE, mostly with respect to system performance but also as a relatively straightforward measure of performance of graphics cards in older applications based on the DX8 standard. One thing to mention in this context and what is easily overlooked is that the eye candy within the gaming benchmarks of 3DMark2001SE still outdoes almost every single game we have seen, regardless of whether they are DX8 or DX9 compliant and in so far, it appears that eliminating a benchmark on the basis of the standard or API used would be somewhat idiotic. Let the games catch up to those performance standards set even within the old standards and they we can talk again.

No AA

ATI rules in the DX8 hallmark, even in SLI configuration, the 6600 GT cannot keep up with the RADEONs which had to be expected because at the time, the only SLI around was that of 3dfx and that one did abide by slightly different rules. On the other hand, there is no difference either between the nominally much weaker X800XT and the X850XT -PE, because the system becomes the main bottleneck for performance.

4xAA

The one thing about antialiasing that is really worth its money is the elimination of edge crawling and, therefore, regardless of how high the resolution is set, AA is a must for any high quality game setting

Needless to say that AA requires more memory bandwidth and more GPU power in general, therefore, at least in 3DMark2001SE - and in most other games, even those that are CPU-limited one way or the other, the outdated AGP interface becomes a negligible factor since most of the processing happens between the GPU and the local frame buffer (graphics memory). In this benchmark, the X850 XT PE is the undisputed winner.

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