3DMark2001 SE measures video card performance simulating DirectX 8.1 games. It is a very good software to evaluate the performance of games from previous generation, 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 triple frame buffer. 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 notice 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, as important to know the performance of a video card with the latest games 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, HIS Radeon X1300 Pro 256 MB 128-bit achieved a similar performance to ATI Radeon X1300 Pro 256 MB 128-bit and it was 14.35% faster than Albatron GeForce 6600 128 MB, 17.77% faster than NVidia GeForce 6600 GT 128 MB, 22.65% faster than Leadtek GeForce 6200 128 MB 128-bit, 66.07% faster than XFX GeForce 6200 TC 64 MB 64-bit, 106.49% faster than PowerColor Radeon X300 SE HM 128 MB 64-bit, 106.62% faster than ATI Radeon X300 128 MB 128-bit, 115.40% faster than Leadtek GeForce 6200 TC 16 MB 64-bit, 153.58% faster than Intel i915G (Intel D915GEV) and 173.42% faster than XGI Volari 8300 128 MB.

Enabling video quality enhancements, HIS Radeon X1300 Pro 256 MB 128-bit achieved a similar performance to ATI Radeon X1300 Pro 256 MB 128-bit and it was 40.52% faster than Albatron GeForce 6600 128 MB, 53.73% faster than nVidia GeForce 6600 GT 128 MB, 111.59% faster than Leadtek GeForce 6200 128 MB 128-bit, 187.16% faster than PowerColor Radeon X300 SE HM 128 MB 64-bit, 188.43% faster than ATI Radeon X300 128 MB 128-bit, 347.03% faster than XFX GeForce 6200 TC 64 MB 64-bit and 1.562.75% faster than Leadtek GeForce 6200 TC 16 MB 64-bit.