peroni

Hello all,

I will start posting my findings on XP drivers for 8500 comparing the first ever released with the latest.

You can find the whole review with screenshots and comments here


Test system

Asus CUBX
Intel P3 1050 MHz
768MB SDR Memory
HD 40GB 7200rpm Quantum Fireball AS
SoundBlaster Live
Pioneer DVD 106s 16x
Hercules FDX 8500 LE 250/250
17" Belinea monitor dot pitch 0.27

All test were carried out with TV-out disabled
AGP mode was set at 2x (highest possible on this BX based board)
AGP aperture = 128MB
No tweakers were installed.
Unless specified all the test were run with default driver settings with the exception of V-sync that was disabled on all tests.
The system was rebooted before EVERY test. (My PSU hates me...)


DRIVERS

6.13.3276 (dated 15-Oct-2001)

With this driver FSAA mode showed several artifacts during some tests. It made me think of memory chips overheating but this is not possible since I have a fan blowing directly onto them. These artifacts completely disappeared with the latest drivers so this turned out to be a bug of the early drivers. The good thing is, it has been solved!
Also it was not possible to turn on the anisotropic filter in Directx games without manually editing the registry.
So I left it disable for both D3D and OGL tests.


6.13.10.6071 (dated 11-Apr-2002)

The modality used for FSAA, now called Smoothvision, is 4x performance.
With this driver set, text on some webpage shows some kind of corruption. See this example. I believe this bug was introduced with 6051 drivers (or was it 6058??) and it is not present on official 6043 drivers.


3dmark 2000

6.13.3276 No Aniso, No Fsaa = 5642
6.13.3276 No Aniso, 4x Fsaa = 2740
6.13.10.6071 No Aniso, No Fsaa = 7521
6.13.10.6071 16x Aniso, 4x Fsaa = 3637


3dmark 2001

6.13.3276 No Aniso, No Fsaa = 6556
6.13.3276 No Aniso, 4x Fsaa = 1866
6.13.10.6071 No Aniso, No Fsaa = 6797
6.13.10.6071 16x Aniso, 4x Fsaa = 2690


Aquamark

6.13.3276 No Aniso, No Fsaa = 37.2 fps
6.13.3276 No Aniso, 4x Fsaa = crashed
6.13.10.6071 No Aniso, No Fsaa = 31.6 fps
6.13.10.6071 16x Aniso, 4x Fsaa = 15.1 fps


Codecreatures

6.13.3276 No Aniso, No Fsaa = crashed
6.13.3276 No Aniso, 4x Fsaa = crashed
6.13.10.6071 No Aniso, No Fsaa = 11.1 fps
6.13.10.6071 16x Aniso, 4x Fsaa = 5.5 fps


Comanche 4

6.13.3276 No Aniso, No Fsaa = 13.75 fps
6.13.3276 No Aniso, 4x Fsaa = 6.80 fps
6.13.10.6071 No Aniso, No Fsaa = 22.34 fps
6.13.10.6071 16x Aniso, 4x Fsaa = 6.24 fps


DronezMark

6.13.3276 No Aniso, No Fsaa = 120.60 fps
6.13.3276 No Aniso, 4x Fsaa = crashed
6.13.10.6071 No Aniso, No Fsaa = 124.19 fps
6.13.10.6071 16x Aniso, 4x Fsaa = 56.39 fps


GLexcess

6.13.3276 No Aniso, No Fsaa = 4269
6.13.3276 No Aniso, 4x Fsaa = crashed
6.13.10.6071 No Aniso, No Fsaa = 4729
6.13.10.6071 16x Aniso, 4x Fsaa = 2345


Vulpine GLmark

6.13.3276 No Aniso, No Fsaa = 33.7 fps
6.13.3276 No Aniso, 4x Fsaa = 24.7 fps
6.13.10.6071 No Aniso, No Fsaa = 43.1 fps
6.13.10.6071 16x Aniso, 4x Fsaa = 21.9 fps


XPBench

6.13.3276 = 15
6.13.10.6071 = 44

__________________
Gaming Rig 3DMark2k1 PCMark2k2
The Server 3Dmark2k1 PCMark2k2
Notebook 3Dmark2k1 PCMark2k2

Candyman

The best part of all this is that the best might be yet to come!

__________________
AMD Athlon XP 1700+ @ 2.53GHz
Abit NF7-S v.2
Thermalright SP-97 w/ TT Smart Fan 2
2 x 512MB GeIL PC3500 Platinum DDR
2 x 120GB WD HDD - RAID-0
2 x 80GB Barracuda V HDD - RAID-0
ATI Radeon AIW 9800PRO
SB Audigy 2
HP L2335 23" LCD (DVI-D)
WinXP Pro SP2

Jeff

AND CYBORG WILL BE THERE!

__________________

jcastill

I hope so