Performance gain with Max????

[mkaresh]

Big Lar,

At this point I guess there's no way to compare the two cards using the same drivers, etc.

Out of sheer curiousity (hehe) I have decided to put a Max in my machine on Monday. Since I don't plan on upgrading from 5.41 (aren't 5.50 drivers still buggy?) I should be able to come up with a solid comparison.

[Big Lar]

I havn't had any problems yet with the 5.50 beta drivers... < got my fingers crossed, even 3dmark is clear, not like the 5.30's were.......

[mkaresh]

Well, I got my Max. Judging from Big Lar's results, those 5.50 drivers are quite nice, because the Max by itself doesn't do a lot, at least not at XGA. (I never benchmarked the Vanilla at 1280x1024, so I can't make a comparison now.)

Benchmark is 3dmark2000, default settings. 128MB aperture (reduces scores by 7 points or so to perform the 64MB textures test).

CPU: 500e at 667mhz
RAM 128MB PC133 at 3-2-2
AGP at 89mhz

Vanilla:
126/168: 2823
144/180: 3020
150/180: 3045
160/180: 3107

Max:
151/201: 3083
150/225: 3162
160/213: 3181
(some black squares appear in the Adventure tests with with setting)

The RAM on the Max is excellent, allowing it to clock far higher than the Vanilla. The stock h/s/f is a different story. The Vanilla with a CPU fan clipped on actually did better at gclock. The back side of the G400 chip gets quite a bit hotter with the Max even with the Vanilla set to 150mhz, telling me the stock heatsink isn't doing enough.

Bottom line: with stock cooling on the Max, it can't do significantly better than an overclocked Vanilla, at least not on this (CPU-biased) benchmark at this res. Even comparing stock to stock, the Max only buys another 9%.

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PIII 500e @667
Soyo SY6BA+IV
Iwill Slotket II
G400 32MB DH @144/180
Nokia 445Xi 21"
Aureal Vortex Superquad
128MB PC133
IBM DPTA 20.5GB 7200rpm
Toshiba 8/40 DVD

[Dyre]

I have a very unrelated question. Why can't 3dmark2000 run a Cpu speed check on my system... Both 99 and 2000 always fail on this test.

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PIII 450 @ 504
generic BX motherboard
G400 MAX : )
Maxtor 13 gig UDMA 33
Maxtor 13 gig UDMA 66
Creative 36x CD-ROM
HP 2x2x6x CD-RW
64 megs PC100 RAM
128 megs PC133 ECC RAM
NetGear 10/100
Soundblaster 32 AWE
Diamond SupraExpress 56k
Logitech Wireless Desktop (best $50 ive ever spent)
1 92mm Sunon Fan
4 80mm Sunon Fan's