Since I failed miserably in my quest to resist the siren's call, the least I could do was to take a serious look at how better I fared. On the other hand, I have stated that I wanted to be able to give benchmarks on configurations that are not top-of-the-line, so now is the time to do so.
Therefor, I have tested for you the effects of a GeForce 3 card on a lowly PIII 450Mhz, as well as on an Athlon 1Ghz. I have also discovered the importance of a BIOS parameter called "AGP aperture size", which we will discuss later. For now, let me just outline the starting configuration :
So, here is the configuration of Sharok and Falmir before the upgrades:
| Elements | Sharok | Falmir |
| CPU | AMD Athlon 1Ghz (K7B) | Intel Pentium III 450 |
| Bus speed | 200Mhz DDR | 100Mhz |
| Video Card | GeForce 2 GTS (64Mb) | GeForce 2 GTS (32Mb) |
| RAM | 256Mb PC133 | 192Mb PC100 |
This benchmark took place after the NVidia DetXP upgrade, so 3DMark 2001 and Quake III were already installed and all I had to do was install the new cards and start the benchmarks again.
The settings for the 3DMark 2001 benchmark are as follows :
| Criteria | Setting |
|---|---|
| Tests | All |
| Resolution | 1024 by 768 |
| Color Depth | 32 bit |
| Buffer | Double |
| Z-Buffer | 24 bit |
| Anisotropic | Disabled |
| Textures | Compressed |
For Quake III, I used High detail, max texture and filter on trilinear.
Next : Sharok's Tests