Author: HQH
Released: August 6, 2004
Updated: August 19, 2004
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Well, that's what I currently ended up with when I benchmarked Doom 3 for what it seems eternity. I have showed what type of
performance numbers are achieved from my computer configuration. Mainly an Intel Pentium 4 2.4C (and overclocking to 3+ GHz) and
an ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 9800 Pro (basically a Radeon 9800 Pro at heart). ATI finally released Catalyst 4.8 driver, so benchmarks
were done for 4.8 as this editorial was once focused on Catalyst 4.7 and 4.9 beta at its original release date. I hope you enjoyed
the benchmark results. I can't say that you'll get results exactly like mine, as this world doesn't live in an ideal performance
world. So performance may vary by system configurations.
One sad thing was that I couldn't overclock my ATI AIW Radeon 9800 Pro more aggressively due to heat issues which causes
artifacts and stability problems. That's only because I'm relying on stock air cooling and that during the benchmarking times, it
doesn't help that temperature was on the warm-hot side (due to hot weather, even with AC running at times). I've reached higher
clock cycles before, but that was during winter time. Right now is summer time, so there are potential improvements when the
Radeon 9800 Pro is clocked higher.
Another sad thing is that with a Radeon 9800 Pro, performance diminishes when having an Intel Pentium 4 running greater than
3 GHz. The Radeon 9800 Pro show its performance limitations when running Doom 3 at 1024x768 and higher and especially enabling
anti-aliasing at 4x. If you're in need of a video card pairing up with an Intel 3+ GHz CPU, pick a generation after the 9800 series.
The 9800 series is limiting the CPU running at 3+ GHz to show its true performance. The best would be nVidia's GeForce 6800 series
or if you must stick with ATI, the X800 series.
With this editorial updated for Catalyst 4.8, a different result is painted into the performance increase picture. It use to be
that when Catalyst 4.7 was around and Catalyst 4.8 was not available for weeks to come, the only way to get a performance increase
out of an ATI video card was to use Catalyst 4.9 beta, which was released just for Doom 3. The performance was very nice. But now
Catalyst 4.8 driver appeared. Benchmarks show something that was disappointing. Catalyst 4.8 performance was basically on par with
Catalyst 4.9 beta performance.
So this might mean one important thought to consider: The R350 chipset in the Radeon 9800 Pro is reaching near maximum
performance with OpenGL. Subsequent driver releases will only confirm this if performance increase diminishes between each driver
updates. Only time will tell. I'm pretty sure there's no doubt that this may be the case in the future. ATI did mention that
Catalyst 4.9 beta barely yields any good performance improvements with older ATI video cards (9800 and below). I guess they were
probably stating this in comparison with Catalyst 4.8 when it was yet to be released yet instead of Catalyst 4.7. Not exactly sure,
but evidence is there from my perspective that improvement from Catalyst 4.8 to Catalyst 4.9 beta was nothing to celebrate over.
I I hope you enjoyed my Doom 3 benchmark presentation. Thanks for your interest in this editorial.
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