The Voodoo Proof GeForce 2 stomping Radeon
Written: Oct 03 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Incredibly fast, great list of features
Cons: Only 32MB of VRAM on the mac version
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| Eimaj's Full Review: ATI Radeon Mac Edition |
First off, let me talk a little about the video card industry today-
With many companies competing for the title of "fastest fill rate", and tons of buzzwords (Hardware T&L, Bumpmapping, mip-mapping, and anti-aliasing, to name and few) flying around, it's inevitable that all the cards released will be great choices. Keep this in mind when reading my opinion- the Voodoo 5 and GeForce2 (if it comes out for the mac) are great choices in addition to the Radeon, but in my opinion, the Radeon outscores its opposition.
The first chance I had to test the Radeon was at the Macworld Expo NY in July of 2000. Now, when I went downstairs to the room ATI was in (that's right- they were suspiciously lacking a booth that year.. must have been the whole cube leak fiasco) and I first saw the computer running the Radeon, I was a bit pessimistic. They had the Radeon in only a 450MHz G4, and it was only a single processor, so I immediately assumed that I wouldn't be too impressed. Additionally, I had seen the Voodoo5 booth upstairs and I had seen the Voodoo 5 in action, and I wasn't sure as to whether the Radeon could come close to what the Voodoo5 (V5) offered.
However, I was, to my exquisite joy, quite mistaken.
The first game I saw demoed on the Radeon was Quake 3 Arena.
Now, let me just give a bit of preface here- On my 450MHz G4 at home, with 256MB of ram, I have to run at 800x600 if I want to play at a respectable framerate and keep all the graphics options on high. At a higher resolution than 800x600, I start dropping below 22fps, and that's when the screen refresh rate lag becomes noticeable.
The first thing I did with the G4 at the ATI booth was set the resolution to 1024x768, and turn all of the graphics options on high.
In a game with 8 other bots, I was getting an average of 50 frames per second.
Well, always the skeptic, I pumped up the screen resolution to 1280x870 with all the graphics on and let 'er rip.
Oh boy, was I surprised.
The game averaged ~40 frames per second, with 8 bots in the game, and ~35 in high combat situations. This was excellent!
However, not wanting to stop here, I pumped the resolution up to a beefy 2000x1500... for those of you who know anything about games, you'll know that playing a game in 2000x1500 is little more than a fantasy.
However, with the ATI Radeon, I was able to run Quake 3 with 6 other bots in the game and all the graphics options on at 20fps.
"Only 20fps?" you ask? I don't think there is //any// other card capable of even RUNNING in 2000x1500.
So, Quake 3 ran quite well.. but it was time for the real test: Unreal Tournament. How would a peice of software that was not optimized for the mac perform?
I set the resolution to 1280x870, set all graphics options on high, and added 16 bots to the game- I was blown away! The average FPS was 38.
On my G4 at home, with my Rage 128 that came with the system, at 1280x870 with all the graphics and 16 bots on, I'd be lucky to get 20 fps, and here I was sitting pretty at upwards of 40fps.
Alright, now that I've expressed my sheer pleasure at first seeing the Radeon, I will provide some comparison I did, also at Macworld Expo NY in June of 2000, of the Radeon vs. the Voodoo 5.
I mentioned earlier that I did a FPS test using unreal tournament with the Radeon. Knowing that the V5 had a booth upstairs with computers running the V5 and UT, I headed upstairs looking to get a decent comparison.
The first thing I did as go to turn on 4x anti-aliasing.. but a V5 person who was patrolling the booth wouldn't let me, stating crisply "No, 2x anti-aliasing will be fine."
Hmph, the Radeon guys had let me do whatever I had wanted!
So anyway, I entered UT and turned up the resolution to 1280x870.. and strangely, I couldn't select 32bit color, so I had to stick with 16bit color and high graphics options. With 16 bots in game (Oh, just to add to this: I played both the Radeon and V5 on CTF- LavaGiant in order to test large environments which add strain to the graphics card) I got an average of 30 fps. This isn't that much lower than the Radeon, and keep in mind that Anti-Aliasing was on 4x.. but also keep in mind that the color was 16bit.
In my mind, the Radeon is the better of the two cards, and as the drivers get better (they were beta versions at the macworld expo), the card is only going to get faster.
In summary:
The Radeon offers a plethora of features: Anti-Aliasing, Environment mapping, Bump mapping, Hardware T&L, and just about any other graphics card buzzword you can come up with.
Along with these features it offers speeds that remain unbeatable by any mac competition at higher resolutions, and offer the ability to play games at high speeds at high resolutions.
This is definatly a card to purchase.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 250
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Epinions.com ID:
Eimaj
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Member: Jamie Bartels
Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 0 members
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