Benchmarking with 3DMark 2001
The truck race in Low Detail is great, nice and fluid. FPS is between 31 and 83. In High Detail, FPS of 13 to 44 brings down the fluidity somewhat, but not catastrophically.
The Dragon Scene is fine in Low Detail, FPS from 31 to 63. In High Detail with frames from 10 to 21, it just barely the fluid qualifier.
The Matrix scene is fluid, even in High Detail. In Low Detail, FPS goes from 32 to 90. In High Detail, it drops to between 20 and 43, which remains visually acceptable.
The Nature scene is skipped, due to a lack of hardware support.
The Merry-go-round is nice and fluid in Low Detail, but horribly choppy in High Detail.
DOT3 bump mapping is not visually categorizable.
The Vertex Shader test looks quite good, but there is no way to tell the performance.
Pixel Shader test is skipped, which is normal.
Point Sprites test is most definitely choppy. The horse does not turn, it jumps.
Curiously, some Image Quality tests have been skipped due to I don't what material deficiency.
Benchmarking with Quake III demo files
I pushed QIII to 1600x1200 to see just how bad it is. The result is not as terrible as I thought :
| Demo file | FPS at 1024x768 | FPS at 1600x1200 |
|---|---|---|
| Real3 | 64.7 | 26.6 |
| Silver1 | 82.1 | 35.2 |
| Tier1_1 | 118.5 | 50.7 |
| Tier1_2 | 119.4 | 51.6 |
| Tier1_3 | 119.3 | 53.6 |
| Tier1_4 | 113.6 | 49.1 |
| Tier3_1 | 118.5 | 53.3 |
| Tier3_3 | 98.4 | 44.5 |
| Tier3_4 | 110.5 | 47.8 |
Average scores for 1024 is 93.8 FPS, for 1600 it is 41.9. Not bad, but not entirely playable.
Benchmarking with 3DMark 2001
One remark here, the tests for the GeForce 3 crashed systematically before the Nature scene, after the Matrix scene. The solution to that was to change the AGP aperture size in the BIOS from 64 to 128 megs.
During the benchmark I noted the following :
The truck race in Low Detail was fluid and looking good, FPS max was 112, min around 60. In High Detail, the race was still playable but slightly less than before (FPS between 19 and 50).
The dragon scene in Low Detail was also fluid (FPS 67 to 108), High Detail (FPS 36 to 61) looked just as good.
The Matrix scene in Low Detail starts out nicely at 130 FPS, but gets bogged down to 63 before the end. In High Detail we have the same favorable start, albeit at only 65, and ends at 23 looking nice.
The Nature scene is a pure painting of beauty. with FPS speeds between 13 and 36. But nothing was choppy here and it was almost relaxing to watch.
One other test that impressed me was the sea scene. The incredible rendering of the sea surface was quite impressive. Water is something that this generation of cards has mastered.
The Dragon Park in Low Detail is nice and fluid, with wonderful reflections from the glass floor. In High Detail it is still a choppy business, which most decidedly displeased me.
The DX8-specific benchmarks were nice. The Vertex Shader benchmark is a bunch of Matrix-guys running around on a shiny floor and shooting each other. What is interesting is the quality of their clothes - almost looks like leather. The Pixel sharder bench is a stunning view of the sea. You can almost believe you're flying over it. The Point Sprites test I do not comprehend. It is an ugly horse rearing up. I do not like it.
Benchmarking with Quake III demo files
Well here, the results are quite nice :
| Demo file | FPS at 1024x768 | FPS at 1600x1200 |
|---|---|---|
| Real3 | 84.7 | 69.5 |
| Silver1 | 114.0 | 91.9 |
| Tier1_1 | 149.9 | 115.1 |
| Tier1_2 | 152.7 | 118.9 |
| Tier1_3 | 131.1 | 112.1 |
| Tier1_4 | 143.1 | 111.4 |
| Tier3_1 | 135.8 | 113.3 |
| Tier3_3 | 117.8 | 96.7 |
| Tier3_4 | 133.6 | 111.5 |
Average scores for 1024 is 129.19 FPS, for 1600 it is 104.49. Outstanding.
There is one remark I would like to make. Installing the GeForce 3 after a GTS 2 is not a matter of just ripping out the old and plugging in the new. The unified driver architecture NVidia has touted is certainly a good thing, but I still had to format my C: disk and reinstall Windows from scratch. Nuisance it is. Ah well, it's only the 300th time anyway.
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