GPU Cheatsheet - A History of Modern Consumer Graphics Processors
by Jarred Walton on September 6, 2004 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
DirectX 7 Performance
Below you can see our DirectX 7 based video processor chart:
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| GF2 GTS | 200 | 333 | 4 | 2 | 0.5 | 128 | 1600 | 25 | 5081 | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% |
| DirectX 7 | |||||||||||||
| 7500 | 290 | 460 | 2 | 3 | 0.5 | 128 | 1740 | 36 | 7019 | 108.8% | 138.1% | 145.0% | 130.6% |
| GF4 MX460 | 300 | 550 | 2 | 2 | 0.5 | 128 | 1200 | 38 | 8392 | 75.0% | 165.2% | 150.0% | 130.1% |
| GF2 Ultra | 250 | 460 | 4 | 2 | 0.5 | 128 | 2000 | 31 | 7019 | 125.0% | 138.1% | 125.0% | 129.4% |
| GF2 Ti | 250 | 400 | 4 | 2 | 0.5 | 128 | 2000 | 31 | 6104 | 125.0% | 120.1% | 125.0% | 123.4% |
| GF4 MX440 8X | 275 | 500 | 2 | 2 | 0.5 | 128 | 1100 | 34 | 7629 | 68.8% | 150.2% | 137.5% | 118.8% |
| 7500 LE | 250 | 360 | 2 | 3 | 0.5 | 128 | 1500 | 31 | 5493 | 93.8% | 108.1% | 125.0% | 109.0% |
| GF4 MX440 | 275 | 400 | 2 | 2 | 0.5 | 128 | 1100 | 34 | 6104 | 68.8% | 120.1% | 137.5% | 108.8% |
| GF2 Pro | 200 | 400 | 4 | 2 | 0.5 | 128 | 1600 | 25 | 6104 | 100.0% | 120.1% | 100.0% | 106.7% |
| 7500 AIW | 250 | 333 | 2 | 3 | 0.5 | 128 | 1500 | 31 | 5081 | 93.8% | 100.0% | 125.0% | 106.3% |
| GF2 GTS | 200 | 333 | 4 | 2 | 0.5 | 128 | 1600 | 25 | 5081 | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% |
| GF4 MX440 SE | 250 | 333 | 2 | 2 | 0.5 | 128 | 1000 | 31 | 5081 | 62.5% | 100.0% | 125.0% | 95.8% |
| Radeon DDR | 183 | 366 | 2 | 3 | 0.5 | 128 | 1098 | 23 | 5585 | 68.6% | 109.9% | 91.5% | 90.0% |
| GF4 MX4000 | 275 | 400 | 2 | 2 | 0.5 | 64 | 1100 | 34 | 3052 | 68.8% | 60.1% | 137.5% | 88.8% |
| GF4 MX420 | 250 | 333 | 2 | 2 | 0.5 | 64 | 1000 | 31 | 2541 | 62.5% | 50.0% | 125.0% | 79.2% |
| Radeon LE | 148 | 296 | 2 | 3 | 0.5 | 128 | 888 | 19 | 4517 | 55.5% | 88.9% | 74.0% | 72.8% |
| GF2 MX400 | 200 | 166 | 2 | 2 | 0.5 | 128 | 800 | 25 | 2541 | 50.0% | 49.8% | 100.0% | 66.6% |
| Radeon SDR | 166 | 166 | 2 | 3 | 0.5 | 128 | 996 | 21 | 2533 | 62.3% | 49.8% | 83.0% | 65.0% |
| 7200 | 183 | 183 | 2 | 3 | 0.5 | 64 | 1098 | 23 | 1396 | 68.6% | 27.5% | 91.5% | 62.5% |
| GF2 MX | 175 | 166 | 2 | 2 | 0.5 | 128 | 700 | 22 | 2541 | 43.8% | 49.8% | 87.5% | 60.4% |
| GeForce 256 DDR | 120 | 300 | 4 | 1 | 0.5 | 128 | 480 | 15 | 4578 | 30.0% | 90.1% | 60.0% | 60.0% |
| GF2 MX200 | 175 | 166 | 2 | 2 | 0.5 | 64 | 700 | 22 | 1266 | 43.8% | 24.9% | 87.5% | 52.1% |
| GeForce 256 SDR | 120 | 166 | 4 | 1 | 0.5 | 128 | 480 | 15 | 2533 | 30.0% | 49.8% | 60.0% | 46.6% |
| 7000 AGP^ | 183 | 366 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 64 | 549 | 0 | 2792 | 34.3% | 55.0% | 0.0% | 29.8% |
| 7000 PCI^ | 166 | 333 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 64 | 498 | 0 | 2541 | 31.1% | 50.0% | 0.0% | 27.0% |
| Radeon VE^ | 183 | 183 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 64 | 549 | 0 | 1396 | 34.3% | 27.5% | 0.0% | 20.6% |
| * RAM clock is the effective clock speed, so 250 MHz DDR is listed as 500 MHz. | |||||||||||||
| ** Textures/Pipeline is the maximum number of texture lookups per pipeline. | |||||||||||||
| *** Nvidia says their GFFX cards have a "vertex array", but in practice it generally functions as indicated. | |||||||||||||
| **** Single-texturing fill rate = core speed * pixel pipelines | |||||||||||||
| + Multi-texturing fill rate = core speed * maximum textures per pipe * pixel pipelines | |||||||||||||
| ++ Vertex rates can vary by implementation. The listed values reflect the manufacturers' advertised rates. | |||||||||||||
| +++ Bandwidth is expressed in actual MB/s, where 1 MB = 1024 KB = 1048576 Bytes. | |||||||||||||
| ++++ Relative performance is normalized to the GF2 GTS, but these values are at best a rough estimate. | |||||||||||||
| ^ Radeon 7000 and VE had their T&L Engine removed, and cannot perform fixed function vertex processing. | |||||||||||||
Now we're talkin' old school. There are those people in the world that simply can't stand the thought of having less than the latest and greatest hardware on the planet in their PC, and then there are people that have social lives. Okay, it's not that bad, but not everyone needs a super powerful graphics card. In fact, there are plenty of businesses running computers with integrated graphics that would be thoroughly outclassed be even the five year old GeForce 256. If you're only playing older 3D games or just want to get the cheapest non-integrated card you can find, DX7 cards fit the bill. A Home Theater PC that plays movies has no need for anything more, for instance. Or maybe you have a friend that's willing to just give you his old graphics card, and you want to know if it will be better than the piece of junk you already have? Whatever the case, here are the relative performance figures for the DX7 era cards.
No special weighting was used, although with this generation of hardware you might want to pay closer attention to memory bandwidth than the other areas. Fill rate is still important as well, but vertex fill rate is almost a non-issue. In fact, these cards don't even advertise vertex rates - they were measured in triangle rates. Since they had a fixed-function Transform and Lighting (T&L) pipeline, triangles/sec was the standard unit of measurement. The vertex pipelines are listed as "0.5" for the DX7 cards, emphasizing that they are not programmable geometry processors. As luck would have it, 0.5 times clock speed divided by 4 also matches the advertised triangle rates, at least on the NVIDIA cards. Vertex rates are anywhere from two to four times this value, depending on whether or not edges are shared, but again these rates are not achievable with any known benchmark. One item worth pointing out is that the Radeon 7000 and VE parts have had their vertex pipeline deactivated or removed, so they are not true DX7 parts, but they are included as they bear the Radeon name.
Early adopters of the DX7 cards were generally disappointed, as geometry levels in games tended to remain relatively low. First, there was a demo called "Dagoth Moor Zoological Gardens" created for the launch of the original GeForce 256. It was created by a company called "The Whole Experience" and used upwards of 100,000 polygons. Unfortunately, they never released any commercial games using the engine (at least, none that we're aware of). Later, a different company at the launch of the GeForce 2 created a demo that had millions of polygons to show off the "future of gaming" - that company would eventually release a game based off of their engine that you might have hear of, Far Cry. Actually, Crytek Studios demoed for both the original GeForce 2 launch and the GeForce 3 launch. They used the same engine and the demo name "X-isle" was the same as well, but the GF3 version added support for some pixel shader and vertex shader effects. Four years after demonstrating the future, it finally arrived! Really, though, it wasn't that bad. Many games are in development for several years now, so you can't blame them too much for delaying. Besides, launching a game that only runs with the newest hardware is tantamount to financial suicide.
As far as performance is concerned, the GeForce2 was the king of this class of hardware for a long time. After the GeForce 3, NVIDIA revisited DX7 cards with the GF4MX line, which added additional hardware support for antialiasing and hardware bump mapping. While it only had two pixel pipelines in comparison to the 4 of the GF2, the higher core and RAM speeds generally allowed the GF4MX cards to match the GF2 cards, and in certain cases they beat it. The Radeon 7500 was also a decent performer in this class, although it generally trailed the GF2 slightly due to the 2x3 pixel pipeline, which could really only perform three texture operations if two of them came from the same texture. Worthy of mention is the Nforce2 IGP chipset, which included the GF4MX 440 core in place of the normally anemic integrated graphics most motherboards offer. Performance was actually more like the GF4MX420, due to the sharing of memory bandwidth with the CPU and other devices, but it remains one of the fastest performing integrated solutions to this day. Many cards were also crippled by the use of SDR memory or 64-bit buses - we still see such things with modern cards as well, of course. Caveat emptor, as they say. If you have any interest in gaming, stay away from 64-bit buses, and these days even 128-bit buses are becoming insufficient.
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MODEL 3 - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
A lot of mistakes for a professional hardware review site the size of Anandtech.I will only mention the de facto mistakes since I have doubts for more.I am actually surprised about the amount of mistakes in this article.I mean since I live in Greece (not the center of the world in 3d technology or hardware market) I always thought that the editors in the best hardware review sites of the world (like Anandtech) have at least the basic knowledge related to technology and they make research and doublecheck if their articles are correct.I mean they get paid, right?I mean if I can find so easily their mistakes (I have no technology related degree although I was purchase and product manager in the best Greek IT companies) they must be doing something very,very wrong indeed.Now onto the mistakes:ATI :
X700 6 vertex pipelines: Actually this is no mistake since I have no information about this new part but it seems strange if X700 will have the same (6) vertex pipelines as X800XT.I guess more logical would be half as many (3) (like 6800Ultra-6600GT) or double as many as X600 (4).We will see.
Radeon VE 183/183: The actual speed was 166/166SDR 128bit for ATI parts and as low as 143/143 for 3rd party bulk part
Radeon 7000 PCI 166/333 The actual speed was 166/166SDR 128bit for ATI parts and as low as 143/143 for 3rd party bulk part (note that anandtech suggests 166DDR and the correct is 166 SDR)
Radeon 7000 AGP 183/366 32/64(MB): The actual speed was 166/166SDR for ATI parts and as low as 143/143 for 3rd party bulk part (note that anandtech suggests 166DDR and the correct is 166 SDR) also at launch and for a whole year (if ever) it didn't exist a 64MB part
Radeon 7200 64bit ram bus: The 7200 was exactly the same as Radeon DDR so the ram bus width was 128bit
ATI has unofficial DX 9 with SM2.0b support: Actually ATI has official DX 9.0b support and Microsoft certified this "in between" version of DX9.When they enable their 2.0b feutures they don't fail WHQL compliance since 2.0b is official microsoft version (get it?).Feutures like 3Dc normal map compression are activated only in open GL mode but 3Dc compression is not part of DX9.0b.
NVIDIA:
GF 6800LE with 8 pixel pipelines has according to Anandtech 5 vertex pipelines: Actually this is no mistake since I have no information about this part but since 6800GT/Ultra is built with four (4) quads with 4 pixel pipelines each isn't more logical the 6800LE with half the quads to have half the pixel (8) AND half (3) the vertex pipelines?
GFFX 5700 3 vertex pipelines: GFFX 5700 has half the number of pixel AND vertex pipelines of 5900 so if you convert the vertex array of 5900 into 3 vertex pipes (which is correct) then the 5700 would have 1,5
GF4 4600 300/600: The actual speed is 300/325DDR 128bit
GF2MX 175/333: The actual speed is 175/166SDR 128bit
GF4MX series 0.5 vertex shader: Actually the GF4MX series had twice the amount of vertex shaders of GF2 so the correct number of vertex shader is 1
According to Anandtech, the GF3 cards only show a slight performance increase over the GF2 Ultra, and that is only in more recent games : Actually GF3 (Q1 01) was based in 0,18 nm technology and the yields was extremely low.In reality GF3 parts in acceptable quantity came in Q3 01 with GF3Ti series 0,15 nm technology .If you check the performance in open GL games at and after Q3 01 and DX8 games at and after Q3 02 you will clearly see GF3 to have double the performance of GF2 clock for clock (GF3Ti500 Vs GF2Ultra)
Now, the rest of the article is not bad and I also appreciate the effort.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
Sorry, ViRGE - I actually took your suggestion to heart and updated page 3 initially, since you are right about it being more common. However, I forgot to modify the DX7 performance charts. There are probably quite a few other corrections that should be made as well....ViRGE - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
Jared, like I said, you're technically right about how the GF2 MX could be outfitted with either 128bit SDR or 64bit SDR/DDR, but you said it yourself that the cards were mostly 128bit SDR. Obviously any change won't have an impact, but in my humble opinion, it would be best to change the GF2 MX to better represent what historically happened, so that if someone uses this chart as a reference for a GF2 MX, they're more likely to be getting the "right" data.BigLan - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
Good job with the articleLove the office reference...
"Can I put it in my mouth?"
darth_beavis - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
Sorry, now it's suddenly working. I don't know what my problem is (but I'm sure it's hard to pronounce).darth_beavis - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
Actually it looks like none of them have labels. Is anandtech not mozilla compatible or something. Just use jpgs pleaz.darth_beavis - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
Why is there no descriptions for the columns on the graph on pg 2. Are just supposed to guess what the numbers mean?JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
Yes, Questar, laden with errors. All over the place. Thanks for pointing them out so that they could be corrected. I'm sure that took you quite some time.Seriously, though, point them out (other than omissions, as making a complete list of every single variation of every single card would be difficult at best) and we will be happy to correct them provided that they actually are incorrect. And if you really want a card included, send the details of the card, and we can add that as well.
Regarding the ATI AIW (All In Wonder, for those that don't know) cards, they often varied from the clock and RAM speeds of the standard chips. Later models may have faster RAM or core speeds, while earlier models often had slower RAM and core speeds.
blckgrffn - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
Questar - if you don't like it, leave. The article clearly stated its bounds and did a great job. My $.02 - the 7500 AIW is 64 meg DDR only, unsure of the speed however. Do you want me to check that out?mikecel79 - Tuesday, September 7, 2004 - link
#22 The Geforce256 was released in October of 1999 so this is roughly the last 5 years of chips from ATI and Nvidia. If it were to include all other manufacturers it would be quite a bit longer.How about examples of this article being "laden or errors" instead of just stating it.