Test systems

System Setup

AMD Athlon 64 3800+

Gigabyte GA-K8NSNXP-939 nForce3 Ultra chipset

1GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 SDRAM

ATI RADEON 9700 PRO
ATI RADEON 9800 PRO 128MB
ATI RADEON 9800 PRO 256MB
ATI RADEON 9800 XT
Driver version beta CATALYST 4.9 (b4.9 in the graphs)

Leadtek WinFast A400
eVGA e-GeForce FX 5950 Ultra
eVGA e-GeForce FX 5900 SE
ASUS V9950 GeForce FX 5900 Ultra
Driver version 61.77

250GB Maxtor Hard Drive Maxline III SATA Hard Drive w/16MB Cache

Windows XP Professional SP1

DirectX 9.0c

Benchmarks

DOOM 3

Notes

We decided to rely solely on ATI’s beta CATATLYST 4.9 driver this time around. Stability of the driver seems to be up to production standards, and browing through Rage3D’s forums on the topic, we see few complaints.