Athlon & MSI K7 Master vs. Athlon 4 & nForce in Quake III

[Cainxinth]

I'm a gamer at heart so this what truly interests me. Fill in the ? with your opinion.

Quake III (High Quality, 1024 x 768, 32bit, 4X FSAA)

Athlon T-Bird 1.4 GHz
512MB PC2100
MSI K7 Master
ASUS V8200 GF3 64MB

~51 FPS

Athlon 4 1.5 GHz
512MB PC2100
nForce
ASUS V8200 GF3 64MB

~?

 

[WildeBeast]

no difference IMHO, the GeForce3 is the reason the FPS is high, not the processor, so the faster memory bandwith and proccesor may not matter, but I am sure that there would be some improvement.

 

[Phuz]

ACtually I would guesstimate at least a 10fps increase usuing something like the nForce.
Its more efficient in memory organization (each module, or every2 having their own controller), and since q3a is such a memory intensive program it should help with that alone.
I can't explain (lack of knowledge and words) what other aspects of the nForce make it so wicked.. but

 

[Maverick]

Your video card may be fill rate limited at a point.

A better comparison to get an idea of what the nForce's increased memory bandwidth would accomplish is to benchmark a P4 1.5 ghz with a gf3 against a T-bird 1.4 ghz also using a geforce3.

The P4 has more memory bandwidth which gives it pretty good performance numbers. The nForce will hopefully bring this same mem bandwidth to the Athlon4 platform. Quake III is very P4 friendly so you might wanna try a different game. You just want to get an idea of how increased memory bandwidth will improve the fps of the game.

 

[jthsmak]

Framerate is in the eye of the beholder. (another pun, I'm on a roll!)

 

[S0me1X]

Benching a P4 1.5ghz against a Tbird 1.4ghz will not help you to make conclusions about the nForce versus other Athlon platforms. If you are comparing chipsets, why vary the CPU?

 

[Raspewtin]

<< If you are comparing chipsets, why vary the CPU? >>



I think what he's saying is that the primary adv. the P4 has over Athlon4 is the memory bandwidth, so you can guesstimate that a similar performance increase would happen if Athlon4 had the same memory bandwidth. I am not sure if this is true or not, but an interesting hypothesis.

 

[Maverick]

<< I think what he's saying is that the primary adv. the P4 has over Athlon4 is the memory bandwidth, so you can guesstimate that a similar performance increase would happen if Athlon4 had the same memory bandwidth. I am not sure if this is true or not, but an interesting hypothesis. >>



Exactly. What it comes down to is figuring out how the nForce's superior bandwdith will affect his FPS. Too bad there's no P4 chipset that uses DDR ram...then we could get a clear indicator of how memory bandwidth increases fps.