THE graphics cards LIST

[anidex]

Every other day, there's a chap out here posting about which graphics card to buy. This has made me, and quite a few others, pretty irritable since people simply don't bother to scroll down the page and get the answers they seek.

So, in an attempt to minimize this, I've made this thread, which I hope the mods will make a sticky. Below is a link to a shader intensive water demo that I wrote in DirectX 9.0c. It basically stresses the video card using a couple of vertex and pixel shaders (at version 2.0) to test the performance of the card. Please download it and run it. Make sure that the settings in the control panel are:

AntiAliasing: OFF
Anisotropic Filtering: OFF
Texture Preference: Highest Quality
MipMap Detail: Highest Quality
Vertical-Sync: OFF (or Application preference)

The demo automatically dumps a screenshot at frame 125. The screenshot contains the frame rates on top that should prevent people from posting fake scores. The screenshot also helps to determine the image quality. Please post this screenshot here along with the specs as follows.

Screenshot:
Graphics Card: (Manufacturer) (Model) (Amount of video memory) eg: ATI Radeon 9600 PRO 128MB
FPS (from screenshot):
Price You Paid:
Current price:

This application is almost completely independent of CPU usage, so system configuration doesn't play a role in the performance. Also, the code has not been optimized for either ATI or nVIDIA (doh, it's DirectX)! This shoudl lead to a fair benchmark. The app requires DirectX 9.0c and a vertex/pixel shader 2.0 compliant (or higher) card. I welcome everyone with such cards, ranging from the GeForce FX 5200 to the Radeon X800 XTPE to post their scores here. People with the second generation DX9 cards like the 6800 and X800 are even more welcome. It would be nice if the Digit folks could test the above cards and post the scores.

Thank You.

http://www.angelfire.com/trek/startrekindia/Water.zip

[anidex]

To start off, here's the benchmark from my system.

Screenshot:

Graphics Card: ATI Radeon 9600 PRO 128MB
FPS (from screenshot): 56.23
Price I Paid: Rs.15,000
Current price: Rs.9,000

[blade_runner]

the links not working dude !

[JAK]

Originally Posted by blade_runner

the links not working dude !

This page is currently unavailable 
 
Unfortunately, we are unable to process your request at this time. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please try again later.

Ditto...

Good, if this is so, then I will also post my OpenGL sahder's here to test

Oh! wait, the minimum size is 48 MB, as it is really high quality nature scene

[anidex]

Sorry about that, geocities has some problems. So, I've corrected it with a new link. Don't click on it, just RIGHT CLICK and select "Save Target As...".

gxsaurav, why don't you scale down the scene and texture sizes (which I'm sure are what are taking up most of the 48MB) and post them. It'll be very beneficial to a survey of this type. Then, users can benchmark both DirectX and OpenGL performances of their cards.

[DKant]

Hmm..more "I'm buying a graphics card" threads. Why don't the mods make this a sticky, so new threads on graphics cards aren't started just bcoz the people concerned didn't look all over the page hard enough?

[blade_runner]

plz post the screenshots as clickable thumbnails !

Screenshot:


Graphics Card: Nvidia Geforce Fx 5200 128Mb
FPS (from screenshot): 8.93
Price I Paid: Rs.4,000.
Current price: Rs.3,800.

Originally Posted by anidex

Sorry about that, geocities has some problems. So, I've corrected it with a new link. Don't click on it, just RIGHT CLICK and select "Save Target As...".

gxsaurav, why don't you scale down the scene and texture sizes (which I'm sure are what are taking up most of the 48MB) and post them. It'll be very beneficial to a survey of this type. Then, users can benchmark both DirectX and OpenGL performances of their cards.

but downsampling, only lowers the files size when compressed with UHARC to 20 MB, the real file size extracted are over 80 MB

Also downsampling lowers the image wuality, not good

Don't worry, I m writting one from scratch, just for benchmarking

[anidex]

C'mon guys, post your benchmark scores.

gxsaurav, why don't you use DXT compression. Should bring down your texture sizes by atleast 4 times, if not more? Would be much easier than re-writing the whole thing again.

I m not rewritting the whole thing again, I m writing a tottely different thing, the current one I have is based on OpenGL 1.4 ARB codepath, the new one I m making in OpenGL 2.0

They are already DXTC, they use compression for the textures for the scene at the front of player & everything before that particular frame is fiushed from the memory

[anidex]

BTW, why don't you post your GeForce FX 5900 XT's scores of the water demo?

[blade_runner]

Anidex why dont u post a clickable thumbnail of the image, so that page loads better. Goto www.imageshack.us and upload ur image, u will get a code generated automatically for the clickable thumbnail.

Also guys u need to install DX9.0c to be able to run this thing. So better create a restore point in case anything goes wrong. Btw i got 9.08Fps with the Omega drivers.........

[anidex]

Thanks blade, I did that.

[JAK]

Hmm...

Ok here is mine...



Details
9.18fps @ 1024x768
MSI GeForce FX 5200 :128MB

1st, I don't have Dx9c & this crashes on DX 9b, I m waiting for digit to get in my hand so that I can install SP2 with DX 9c

Those of U who want to see the Supported OpenGL extensions can download GLView from here. This will only show the current OpenGL extensions supported by your card & Drivers

Note NVIDIA 61.77 has no support of OpenGL 2.0, only 66.00 beta or later drivers support OepnGl 2.0

[JAK]

Originally Posted by gxsaurav

1st, I don't have Dx9c & this crashes on DX 9b, I m waiting for digit to get in my hand so that I can install SP2 with DX 9c

Those of U who want to see the Supported OpenGL extensions can download GLView from here. This will only show the current OpenGL extensions supported by your card & Drivers

Note NVIDIA 61.77 has no support of OpenGL 2.0, only 66.00 beta or later drivers support OepnGl 2.0

hey i am waitin for ur scores..u hav a 9800xt right...

[blade_runner]

Nah he has a 5900XT .............

Ya JAK, Gigabyte FX5900XT, If U are already eager for my benchmarks results U can check my posts in general section, I have posted scores of Aquamark, & UT along with Doom3

Hey Anidex, just to not create confusion, which drivers U want to me test it with 61.77 or 65.73, I m rite now usinh 65.73 & Doom3 performance is about the same but the quality is highly incresed even in Mediaum Quality, Although I m playing at my settings while at Mediaum settings it use 1X anis tropic filtering, so I Edited the Doomconfig.cfg to use 2x anis & 2x aa

My Settings, 1024X768 85 Hz, V-Sync on, 2XQ AA & 2X Anis, at this I GET Quality compared to 1280X1024, never required to go any further, although I go if even at these settings the quality is bad

Ok, I just installed Windows from scratch, with XP SP2 slipstreamed, I haven't configured it much, I m using the 61.77 Drivers & everything in driver panel is set to the default of Quality, the usual things were running in the background like, NAV2004, Window Blinds etc, I just clicked the water.exe & it started running by itself. Rite now I have done no Gaming Optimisation to my PC for as much raw performance as possible

The screenshot made at 125 Frames was 3 MB in size, a bmp file, I compressed it to jpg, the quality is decresed due to that,


Image 150 KB

[anidex]

I sort of suspected this would happen with gxsaurav and it did I noticed a variation in the font at the top that indicates the fps. The demo uses the basic Windows font "Veranda", so the possibility that he doesn't have it is unlikely. So what could've happened ?

Here's the image that gxsaurav posted :-



and here's how it should actually look.



As you can see, while the rest of the app renders text with the same font, only the fps count seems to be different :roll:! Care to explain gxsaurav? C'mon, your dear nVIDIA's DX9 compliant card couldn't have given too low an fps that would've made you fire up an image editing tool and............................................... ....... , could it have? And why does the terrain in your screenshot look so badly tessellated? Has somebody be running a tessellation reductor on the model ?

[JAK]

Originally Posted by anidex

I sort of suspected this would happen with gxsaurav and it did I noticed a variation in the font at the top that indicates the fps. The demo uses the basic Windows font "Veranda", so the possibility that he doesn't have it is unlikely. So what could've happened ?

Here's the image that gxsaurav posted :-



and here's how it should actually look.



As you can see, while the rest of the app renders text with the same font, only the fps count seems to be different :roll:! Care to explain gxsaurav? C'mon, your dear nVIDIA's DX9 compliant card couldn't have given too low an fps that would've made you fire up an image editing tool and............................................... ....... , could it have? And why does the terrain in your screenshot look so badly tessellated? Has somebody be running a tessellation reductor on the model ?

hmm....

Looks like he edited 48.**fps and 5900XT..

Cool, U got me

The thing I was also running fraps to capture it as a avi in the background, my FPS sluttered between 17 to 42, so when it took the screenshot it was in fact 19, I editied it to show the max FPS, as the demo ran even after 125 fps, for more true comparision, can U plz recode it so that it can take a Screenshot at every 125 fps & not only after first 125 fps, I had not optimized the PC for gaming at that time, now it is done, soon will be posting it again

The image quality is low, I admit that, this is due to the fact that I encoded the jpg with quality level 5 in Photoshop, I though, only the fps matters so, I decresed the quality, I didn't knew U wanted quality, I have one made of only 70 KB with a really bad sky, the real bmp was 3 mb, the max quality jpg was 577 kb, tell me if I optimized the file size thinking that the fps is all that matters, did I do something wrong,

I only edited 48.88, anidex code it again, make it such that it takes a screenshot at every 125 fps,

Remembar caching, the game I run, any game Far cry, d3 I run with cache, there is no cache, I had reinstalled windows only 2 hrs earlier, comon guys, if U think I m that bad, than Ok, I can't change your thinking

Re downloading it, will post results tomorrow morning, or may be ater 30 mins

[JAK]

Originally Posted by gxsaurav

Cool, U got me

The thing I was also running fraps to capture it as a avi in the background, my FPS sluttered between 17 to 42, so when it took the screenshot it was in fact 19, I editied it to show the max FPS, as the demo ran even after 125 fps, for more true comparision, can U plz recode it so that it can take a Screenshot at every 125 fps & not only after first 125 fps, I had not optimized the PC for gaming at that time, now it is done, soon will be posting it again

U cud hav simply re-run the prog again without Fraps runnin..and posted the fps...but then why did u edit 5900XT...

Ok, I have done it again, 17 FPs funny, it is using 24 bit presicion, it should use either 16 or 32 cos I m using NVIDIA card not ATI, could it be optimized for ATI, what could I say I don't have the source code

This is tottly untouched, but again compressed, it just gets blurred with Baseline optimisation in Photoshop, again, I don't think anyone will like a 900 KB JPG, besides, if My card is such bad in DX 9c, then Y m I geting nice frames better then before in Far Cry with Patch 1.2 taken from warez

Anidex, do U have any game that U think shows this DX vs OpenGL thing better, not a demo. Which game U think that shows this benchmark good, I will see if I can arrange it

I m using 61.77 Official with everything set to default, & I haven't touched anything in this pic this time other then Compression

Still unsure, I invite anyone at my home to check it your self, or I can post a bunch of screenshots of any game I have, u name it , If I have it I will post screenshot, not benchmark from someone with whom I argued a few days ago for ATI vs Nvidia & ANIDEX, U R also using my previous card

FX card is not so good in DX9 ok, but 5900XT is better then 9600 Pro

PC is optimized, D3 & Far Cry works fine, this time I had nothing running the background, I was down to 16 services from 22, everything closed

When U learn image editing the first thing U have to maintain is the file size, I had no idea that compression will decrese the image quality this much that membars will jump & say "U R A Lier, U don't have FX5900XT, it su**S" etc

Anything else, again, I m inviting

[blade_runner]

Hmm even i though so but dint say anything........i noticed the difference in fonts and plus the scores looked a bit suspicious........I had my mind on the 5900Xt getting arnd 25-30 Fps. But it runs way lower than my estimate !!

@Gxsaurav: Dude try shadermark, the latest verison. thats also a good software to test ur shader peformance. But believe me the fx series in many ways than one. No point in just defending the card just cuz u have brought it. Since i too have a Fx card.......a 5200 albeit.....but i am switching to a ATi card soon, maybe a 9800pro or a 9600XT. But really in the last pic the 5900 XT looks edited !

This is how ur pic looks like, take a look @ 900XT the font is a different



And this is how it shud look like



Got the difference !!

If somebody doesn't want to belive, fine, I can't change their mind,

Shadermark, Downloading it now, I m not defending my card, anidex this made this on Radeon 9600 Pro from Gigabyte, I sold that card, which was my previous card to a friend, so I will again check it at his home,

Since he made this on ATI, DX SDK automatically compiled this according to his Radeon, not his fault, this is the same reason games made on NVIDIA looks better on NVIDIA cards & games made on ATI looks better on ATI

WTH, R We, simple users, I don't care what a game is made on what performance I should get, benchmark is something I prefer but many times games defy it, Till now every game I have played runs really fine at my settings, just this benchmark, which is using 24 bit precision (strange to me,NVIDIA doesn't do 24 bit, while DX gives support for 16,24,32, so if it was not optimized then it should run at 16 or 32 on nvidia cards)

Well, atleast OpenGL does

& for the last time 5900XT is not edited aaaaaaaaa