Introduction

More Thunderbird testing!

After posting our second Thunderbird article, (which examined the 3D performance of a Thunderbird system paired with various graphics cards) we received lots of requests from you, the readers of FiringSquad, concerning FSAA performance.

During our initial batch of Thunderbird tests, we simply didn't have enough time to test our graphics cards with and without FSAA enabled. With this in mind, we trekked back to AMD's office in Sunnyvale in the hopes of getting some answers.

Unlike our previous articles, this time our scores were taken with an MSI motherboard, the K7T Pro. We used FIC's motherboard manufactured for Compaq in previous tests.

The K7T Pro is based on VIA's KT133 chipset and features 6 PCI slots and a CNR slot. (CNR is the successor to AMR) Like the original K7 Pro, the K7T Pro was designed with overclockers in mind. Bus speeds available in BIOS are 100, 101, 103, 105, 107, 109, 110, 111, 113, 115, 117, and 120MHz. Voltage selection ranges from 1.6-1.8V in .025V increments.

Testing with the K7T Pro and the Thunderbird processor went very well. While the tests only ran for a few hours we didn't encounter any stability or compatibility issues with the Thunderbird system during testing. From these initial tests, it looks like MSI has another winner on its hands with the K7T Pro. We'll examine the motherboard a little more closely in an upcoming review.

For this article we decided to compare the FSAA performance of the Voodoo5 and GeForce 2 with Quake 3 as the benchmark of choice. We didn't have much time to test that day, so we figured Quake 3 was the benchmark you wanted to see the most.

Since our tests were conducted with the MSI motherboard we'll also get a better idea of the performance potential of a typical homebuilt Thunderbird PC. Will the K7T Pro Voodoo5/GeForce 2 combinations offer similar levels of performance to the results we found in our original Thunderbird 3D performance article? Before we explore this question, we wanted to provide more FSAA screenshots from a game that really benefits from it: Counterstrike.

Lots of firepower!

What a trap!