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.

For the record, Albatron GeForce 6600 included in our comparison ran at 300 MHz and accessed its memory at 500 MHz.

3DMark2001 SE - 1024x768	Score	Difference
GeForce 7300 GT 256 MB 128-bit OC (Zogis)	17266
GeForce 7300 GT 256 MB 128-bit (NVIDIA)	16068	7.46%
Radeon X1300 Pro 256 MB 128-bit (HIS)	15410	12.04%
GeForce 6600 128 MB (Albatron)	13476	28.12%
GeForce 6600 GT 128 MB (NVIDIA)	13085	31.95%
GeForce 6200 128 MB 128-bit (Leadtek)	12564	37.42%
GeForce 6200 TC 64 MB 64-bit (XFX)	9279	86.08%
Radeon X300 SE HM 128 MB 64-bit (PowerColor)	7463	131.35%
Radeon X300 128 MB 128-bit (ATI)	7458	131.51%
GeForce 6200 TC 16 MB 64-bit (Leadtek)	7154	141.35%
i915G (Intel D915GEV)	6077	184.12%
Volari 8300 128 MB (XGI)	5636	206.35%

3DMark2001 SE - 1024x768 - Aax4, FBx3	Score	Difference
GeForce 7300 GT 256 MB 128-bit OC (Zogis)	13582
GeForce 7300 GT 256 MB 128-bit (NVIDIA)	12364	9.85%
Radeon X1300 Pro 256 MB 128-bit (HIS)	11739	15.70%
GeForce 6600 128 MB (Albatron)	8354	62.58%
GeForce 6600 GT 128 MB (NVIDIA)	7636	77.87%
GeForce 6200 128 MB 128-bit (Leadtek)	5548	144.81%
Radeon X300 SE HM 128 MB 64-bit (PowerColor)	4088	232.24%
Radeon X300 128 MB 128-bit (ATI)	4070	233.71%
GeForce 6200 TC 64 MB 64-bit (XFX)	2626	417.21%
GeForce 6200 TC 16 MB 64-bit (Leadtek)	706	1823.80%