3DMark2001 SE measures video card performance simulating DirectX 8.1 games. It is very effective software for evaluating the performance from previous-generation games, programmed using DirectX 8. In this software we ran two tests, both at 1024x768x32. Since we were evaluating low-end video cards, we decided to not run our tests in higher resolutions, since rarely a user that buys a video card from this level will push resolutions above 1024x768 in 3D games.
We ran this software first without antialiasing and with no frame buffer, and then we put the antialiasing at 4 samples and the frame buffer at triple-buffering. This improves the video quality but lowers the performance. We were willing to see how much performance we lost by putting the VGA to run at the maximum possible image quality. It is important to note that ATI chips can run at 6x antialiasing. Since NVIDIA chips cannot run at this configuration, we had to use 4x antialiasing to use a configuration that is valid to all video cards included in our benchmark, allowing direct comparison between them. Also, some very low-end video chips (Volari 8300 and Intel i915G) don’t have antialiasing feature, so we were not able to benchmark them using this configuration.
You may be asking yourself why we added an old program in a review of a latest generation video card. To us, it is as important to know the performance of a video card with the latest games as it is to know its performance in an older game. That’s why we kept this software in our methodology.
At the default 3DMark2001 SE configuration, XFX GeForce 6200 TurboCache 64 MB 64-bit was 24.33% faster than Radeon X300 SE HyperMemory 128 MB 64-bit (PowerColor), 24.42% faster than Radeon X300 128 MB 128-bit (ATI), 29.70% faster than GeForce 6200 TurboCache 16 MB 32-bit (Leadtek), 52.69% faster than i915G (Intel D915GEV) and 64.64% faster than Volari 8300 128 MB (XGI)
XFX GeForce 6200 TurboCache 64 MB 64-bit was beaten by Radeon X1300 Pro 256 MB 128-bit (ATI), which was 67.99% faster, GeForce 6600 128 MB (Albatron), which was 45.23% faster, GeForce 6600 GT 128 MB (NVIDIA), which was 41.02% faster and GeForce 6200 128 MB 128-bit (Leadtek), which was 35.40% faster.
Enabling video quality enhancements, XFX GeForce 6200 TurboCache 64 MB 64-bit was 271.95% faster than GeForce 6200 TurboCache 16 MB 32-bit (Leadtek).
XFX GeForce 6200 TurboCache 64 MB 64-bit was beaten by Radeon X1300 Pro 256 MB 128-bit (ATI), which was 354.49% faster, GeForce 6600 128 MB (Albatron), which was 218.13% faster, GeForce 6600 GT 128 MB (NVIDIA), which was 190.78% faster, GeForce 6200 128 MB 128-bit (Leadtek), which was 111.27% faster, Radeon X300 SE HyperMemory 128 MB 64-bit (PowerColor), which was 55.67% faster and Radeon X300 128 MB 128-bit (ATI), which was 54.99% faster.
