Test System Setup

Test System Setup

Intel Pentium III Coppermine 750MHz
Intel Celeron 300A o/c to 450MHz
Abit BF6 motherboard
Apacer 128MB PC133 SDRAM

ASUS AGP-6800 Deluxe GeForce 256 DDR
Driver version: Detonator 3.68
Driver version: Detonator 5.08 w/ FSAA
Driver version: Detonator 5.08 w/o FSAA

Creative Labs TNT2 Ultra
Driver version: Detonator 3.68
Driver version: Detonator 5.08

Western Digital Caviar 310100 hard drive
Windows98 SE

Benchmarks

Quake 3 Retail - 512x384 Fastest, Normal, High Quality
Quake 3 Retail - 640x480 Fastest, Normal, High Quality
Quake 3 Retail - 800x600 Fastest, Normal, High Quality
Quake 3 Retail - 1024x768 Fastest, Normal, High Quality
Quake 3 Retail - 1280x1024 Fastest, Normal, High Quality
Quake 3 Retail - 1600x1200 Fastest, Normal, High Quality

Notes

We chose to use both a GeForce and a TNT2 Ultra card. We tested the cards with our Coppermine P3-750, and a Celeron 300A overclocked to 450MHz. We ran numbers on the GeForce with S3TC enabled and disabled and with FSAA enabled and disabled, and with the older 3.68 drivers. The TNT2 Ultra doesn't have support for texture compression or FSAA, so we only ran the card with the 3.68 and 5.08 drivers.

We enabled and disabled S3TC (r_ext_compress_textures) to test if it was responsible for the frame rate boost. The TNT2 Ultra is there to see if T&L is the reason behind the boost. If the TNT2's performance doesn't improve much with the new drivers, then we can probably credit the T&L. We also used a lower speed Celeron processor to give the T&L a little more room to shine, and to eliminate the P3 SSE optimization angle. For those of you that don't care why the drivers are faster and just want benchmark scores, we also did a set on our P3-750.