HIS All-In-Wonder 9600 XT

System Setup

Mobile AMD Athlon XP 2500+ @ 11.0x200 (2200MHz); Abit NF7-S v2.0 motherboard; 2 x 512Mb OCZ PC3500 Enhanced Bandwidth Platinum Edition @ 200MHz, 2.5-2-2-11; Western Digital WD800 80GB ATA100 Hard drive; Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 1; DirectX 9.0c; ATI Catalyst 4.8 WHQL.

Cards used:

• HIS Excalibur All-In-Wonder 9600 XT 128MB;
  
• ATI 9600 PRO 128MB;
  
• ATI 9600 XT 128MB.

The Test Suite:

Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering were handled by the application where possible, in order to allow the game to calculate FSAA & AF the way it was designed to, rather than being forced via the driver control panel. If there was no application control for FSAA & AF, they were forced accordingly via the driver control panel.

• Doom 3:- Alpha Labs I play through; Game detail - Medium; 1024x768 0xAA 0xAF
  
• Counter-Strike: Source Beta:- Custom time demo; Game detail - Maximum; 1024x768 2xAA 8xAF (application)
  
• Far Cry v1.2:- Regulator demo; Game detail - Very High; 1024x768 0xAA 0xAF
  
• Unreal Tournament 2004:- Ons-Dria custom time demo; Game detail - Maximum 1024x768 0xAA 8xAF (control panel)
  
• Call Of Duty Multiplayer:- mp_dawnville demo; Game detail - Maximum; 1024x768 2xAA 8xAF (control panel)
  
• Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow:- A play through of the first half of the first level; Game detail - High 1024x768 0xAA 8xAF (control panel)¹
  
• Need For Speed: Underground:- A run through of the drag race included in the demo; Game detail - Maximum 1280x1024 0xAA 8xAF (control panel)

Doom 3:-
We made use of a five-minute section of the "Alpha Labs I" level in order to give realistic game play results. "God Mode" was enabled and we chose to use the Veteran skill level in order to put maximum stress on the system while enabling us to keep the recording period as repeatable as possible.

Counter-Strike: Source beta:-
We've made a time demo from a 10 minute passage of play on an actual server with 12 players taking part in the game. There are parts of actual game play where we're actually taking part in the skirmish, and there's also a passage of play where we are using spectator mode after being killed.

Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow:-
For our measurement period in this game, we've used the start of the first level, right up to where Fisher is told about the stream that runs parallel to the Embassy wall. My end of my measuring point is where Fisher climbs down from the building overlooking the Embassy and he is sitting on the edge of the stream.

Real world testing:

While we see a number of time demos being introduced into my graphics card test suite, I still believe that real world testing should be a part of the review too, as the overall game experience of a graphics card is of utmost importance. Anyone can run a time demo and record the numbers, but I find that running time demos <b>in conjunction</b> with actually understanding the overall game experience provided by each of the cards gives us with a much better insight into how well an architecture performs. I've used time demos for repeatability, while at the same time I've played through parts of all of the titles used to give an insight into frame rate lag.

¹ - Many of you may, or may not know that Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow doesn't support Anti-Aliasing of any form. Basically the issue comes down to the fact that the game uses post-filtering effects such as night vision and thermal vision. The original scene is rendered to a texture (i.e. the scene, without night vision applied) and then a few passes of post processing is done on it; eventually the texture is copied into the main buffer. Due to the game being a DirectX 8 title, it is impossible to create multisample texture render targets. Thus, Application Preference Anti-Aliasing has been selected for this game on all graphics cards. With the mid to low end graphics cards that we're reviewing here, I've chosen to use 8x Anisotropic Filtering.

Now, lets get on with some benching...