Date: |
November 11th, 2003 |
Price: |
$53 |
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Author: |
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Score: |
8/10 |
Power Color Radeon 9200 SE 64 MB Video Card Benchmarks First off, I’ll go through the benchmarks. All of these benchmarks are done on my personal system (an Athlon 2500 series Barton core on an Asus A7N8X motherboard, with 512 MB DDR RAM running at , running Windows XP SP 1, with Catalyst build 6.14.10.6387) and compared against a Radeon 9600 Pro 256 MB card, also from Power Color.
3D Mark 2001 SE Build 330
3D Mark 2001 is one of the more popular benchmarks out there. This benchmark is used to test compared to older games, and also shows some indication of newer games; however, it does not test the newest versions of DirectX that have been released, and therefore it is not totally accurate. Also, there are some inherent optimizations some drivers now have that will affect these scores, but would not affect game play.
On average, the 9200 did approximately half as well as the 9600 in 3D Mark. However, even the lowest scores are still above 3000, which is easily an acceptable range.
Unreal Tournament 2003 (via Hard OCP’s script, v2.1)
I tested with Hard OCP’s script for low quality only, on 1024 x 768 and 1280 x 1024. After running it on these two settings, it became clear that the 9200 would not hold up even slightly on the higher settings for some maps, and others would be questionable for playability.
The 9200 held up decently well in FPS on most maps, however it had problems with CTF_Face3 and DM_Inferno, both of which had an average FPS below 30, and several other maps had averages in the 30’s. CTF_Face3 in particular had low FPS at several points, typically when the statues were on the screen.
Gun Metal: 1 and 2 Benchmarks
This set of benchmarks is the only ones that use DirectX 9, and that shows in how well the cards both did. The 9200 hurt on the Gun Metal benchmarks, but it would still be of playable frame rates on the lowest settings.
In the first Gun Metal test, the cards performed fairly similarly at high resolutions, with the 9600 pushing ahead slightly in all cases. In the second test, however, the lack of DirectX 9 onboard hurt the 9200. Playing a DirectX 9 game would be unadvisable on the 9200; fortunately, there are no games that utilize DirectX 9 to its fullest yet.
Overall, the 9200 performed adequately in benchmarks testing pre DX 9, but it suffered in the DX 9 enabled tests. If Direct X 9 support is a major issue to you, the 9600 may be worth looking into.
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