# Benchmark project - PCI-E videocards since 2004



## havli (Oct 27, 2018)

This is my 5th VGA benchmarking project. The preparation was ongoing for a long time and now it is finally the time to launch it. 

But first a brief descriprion of the previous four projects. The first one started in 2007 and took about 1.5 months to finish. So in fact a very small project... but it was just a start.  

*Project #1*
Time frame: 13th Ocrober 2007 - 22nd November 2007 (1.5 months total)
VGAs of years: 1996 - 2001 (14 pieces total)
Testing platform: Celeron 600, Athlon XP 2000+
Games / applications used: 9
Amount of settings per card and game: unknown
Link: dead

*Project #2*
Time frame: 23rd June 2009 - 5th March 2011 (22 months total)
VGAs of years: 1998 - 2001 (65 pieces total)
Testing platform: Athlon XP @ 2.16 GHz
Games / applications used: 15
Amount of settings per card and game: up to 15 (640x480x16, 800x600x16/32, 1024x768x16/32, 1600x1200x16/32, 800x600x16/32 2xAA, 800x600x16/32 4xAA, 1024x768x16/32 2xAA, 1024x768x16/32 4xAA)
Values measured: ~ 5900
Link: http://hw-museum.cz/article/2/benchmark-vga-1998---2001--2011-edition-/1

*Project #3*
Time frame: 7th December 2010 - 15th March 2016 (66 months total, project stopped, ~ 80% finished)
VGAs of years: 2004 - 2008 (50 pieces total)
Testing platform: Core i5 2500k @ 4.5 GHz
Games / applications used: 20 (+ many of them tested at two levels of details)
Amount of settings per card and game:  up to 8 (1024x768, 1280x1024, 1600x1200, 1920x1200 - all of them at noAA, 16xAF / 4xAA, 16xAF )
Values measured: > 10000
Link: http://hw-museum.cz/article/3/benchmark ... edition-/1 Partial results, last update was sometimes in 2012. Anything measured after that never made it to the public and never will.

*Project #4*
Time frame: 20th October 2013 - present (59 months, project still active, ~ 80% finished)
VGAs of years: 2000 - 2004 (58 pieces planned)
Testing platform: Pentium E5700 @ 3.9 GHz
Games / applications used: 19 (+ many of them tested at two or three levels of details)
Amount of settings per card and game: up to 12 (800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1600x1200 - all of them at noAA, noAF / 2xAA, 4xAF / 4xAA, 8xAF)
Values measured: ~10000
Link: Not online yet, will be published as an article on my website (no ETA though ).  Until then there will be series of GPU Duel videos on Youtube.

*----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

Enough of history, now it is time for the latest project. I have been testing PC hardware over 10 years and during that time I gained a lot of experience in this field. Also my capabilities of preparing the right SW tools for proper benchmarking are now better than ever. Not to mention the ability to buy the right tools and equipment which wasn't the case before.
This means the Project #5 wil be the best I can do... and I dare to say it won't be far from the best GPU tests you can find on the whole Internet.  Also I realized "less sometimes means more" and truly monstrous projects like #3 here may prove too difficult and time consuming to finish in reasonable timeframe. In this case it all took too long, the methodology became obsolete. So this time there will be slightly slimmer, reasonable time demanding methodology - more quality, less quantity.

The base stone is no doubt the test system. This time it is rather old, but proven by the years of service. Also it matches all my requirements - support of 2-way SLI/CF 16+16 and 3-way SLI/CF 16+8+8. So we are looking at Sandy Bridge-E X79 platform - Asus P9X79 Deluxe and Xeon E5-1650 overclocked to 4.8 GHz. I also considered using something more up-to-date. But there are not many more options in HEDT it seems. Haswell-E wouldn't be that much faster (better IPC, lower clock) and still costs a lot when I want the 40-lanes variants. Gaming performacne of X299 and X399 also isn't all that great and not very cost-effective anyway.


*The final test platform:*

Xeon E5-1650 @ 4.8 GHz at 1.4V, HT disabled (SilentiumPC Navis PRO 240 AIO)
Asus P9X79 Deluxe
4x4 GB DDR3 1600 CL9-9-9-24-1T
Toshiba 3 TB HDD (7200 rpm) - storage for games
Kingston HyperX Savage 120 GB - system
Corsair RM1000i
Fractal Design Define S (4x 140mm, 2x 120mm on AIO)
Windows 7 64 SP1
Acer XF270HU (2560x1440)







*List of video cards to benchmark:*

Considering the problems with getting the right system for the test, it seems this one will have to last not only for the first part of this test but also for planned part two or even the part three. 

*Part 1*
Part one is starting with GeForce 6 / Radeon X800 and up to G80 and R600. Also I think some AMD APUs will fit this part nicely - Llano (FM1) and Kabini (AM1).




*Part 2*
Part 2 is still in a distance but the table of video cards to take part is pretty clear for me. It is still work in progress but more or less what you see here will be tested. I think Radeon HD 4770 shoud be also in there and of course some APUs as well. I think Llano will be good match for this part and also Kaveri.




*Part 3*
This one is still far far away  Still, it will continue with DX11 HW. So most likely Starting with HD 5770 / GTS 450 and up to at least R9 290X / GTX 780 Ti. Perhaps I'll extend it up to Fury X and GTX 980 Ti.
No table here, as it is still too early for that. 


*Methodology*

*List of games and SW for part one (2004 - 2007)*
3DMark 03, 05, 06
Doom 3
Far Cry
Far Fry 2
Half-Life 2 EP2
NFS Most Wanted
Bioshock
Call of Duty 4, 5
Crysis
ETQW
Serious Sam 2
FEAR
Mirror's Edge

*Resolution and settings for part one (2004 - 2007)*
1024x768 16xHQAF, noAA
1024x768 16xHQAF, 4xMSAA
1280x1024 16xHQAF, noAA
1280x1024 16xHQAF, 4xMSAA
1280x1024 16xHQAF, 8xMSAA
1280x1024 16xHQAF, 4xMSAA + TRAA
1920x1080 16xHQAF, noAA
1920x1080 16xHQAF, 4xMSAA
1920x1080 16xHQAF, 8xMSAA
1920x1080 16xHQAF, 4xMSAA + TRAA
2560x1440 16xHQAF, noAA
2560x1440 16xHQAF, noAA

Of course I won't test all combinations. For instance with some games AA or TRAA isn't working. And second rule (which saves a ton of time and also my eyes ) - anything that get less than 15 fps avg is out and will get a nice zero instead.  Noone would play games at less than 15 fps anyway.


*Measured properties*

First I must admit, these two are out of my reach. Proper equipment for it is simply too expensive and/or difficult to get.

Frametimes measuring using FCAT.
Measuring power consumption of video card isolated from the rest of the system - just like here on TPU or Tom's HW, etc.


The rest shouldn't be so hard, sot now the better part of the list:

Approximately 80% of all values beasured using Fraps.
Those 80% will contain frametime analysis of course.
Measuring power consumption at wall socket.
Measuring power consumption inside the PSU via SW utility in the OS.
Measuring everything MSI Afterburner can do - GPU load, VRAM, CPU load, RAM, temperature, etc.
Log all the above mentioned values to files and afterwards create charts.
Noise measuring idle / load.
Temperature measuring - 10 minutes Crysis, then 10 minutes in desktop.
Recording some benchmarking videos using second PC and capture card (zero influence on the measured HW) at 1080p / 60 fps. This should be good enough to actually see microstuttering and other smoothness issues.

So all in all this methodology should match the best reviews you can see on the net.


*Processing of the measured results and presentation*

Although this project is means to be less time consuming than the previous ones, it will take time to get everything done and then write an article. Because of that I decided to publish GPU Duels on Youtube on the fly.
How such duel looks? Well, I took an inspiration in GPUReport's Incredible Benchmarks series:  







 Webwalker (the author of GPUReport) did really great job here.  I made my own application that creates video similar to this one from the Fraps and Afterburner logs mentioned earlier. It took a lot of work to get it done but now it is _almost _ready and you can expect the first Duel very soon. 

When the part one is complete, it will be available on my website  http://hw-museum.cz Of course Excel-made charts are now somewhat obsolete, so I have my own tools. The result should be easily readable and it will hold all the interesting extra informations... not just fps. 

I will update this thread with news about the testing progress. And also post links to the GPU Duel videos. You can expect the first one in few days.


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## havli (Oct 31, 2018)

Ok, here we go - the first GPU Duel is ready.

Radeon X1900 XTX vs GeForce 7950 GX2









Now when the SW tool to create this is finally complete, I can have some rest.  It may not look that difficult, but it took well over 100 man-hours of development to get this done.


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## R00kie (Oct 31, 2018)

holly shit, subbed


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## havli (Nov 4, 2018)

Round 2

Radeon X1900 XTX vs GeForce 8800 GTS 640


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## Solaris17 (Nov 4, 2018)

holy shit my dude. subbed.


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## havli (Nov 25, 2018)

This time more balanced fight:

GeForce 8800 GTS 640 vs Radeon HD 2900 XT


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## havli (Jan 13, 2019)

New GPU Duel is online:

GeForce 8800 Ultra OC vs 2 × Radeon HD 2900 XT


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## phill (Jan 13, 2019)

Outstanding


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## agent_x007 (Jan 13, 2019)

@havli Doesn't fully enabled G80 have 64 TMUs ?


> Each block of 16 SPs shares 4 texture address units, 8 texture filter units, and an L1 cache.





> Les 64 unités de filtrage portent donc leurs fruits. (eng. "The 64 filtering units are therefore bearing fruit.")


Source : LINK + LINK.


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## havli (Jan 13, 2019)

I'm certainly no expert at understanding GPU architectures. But There are opinions that G80 is considered to have only 32 TMU... as it have 32 texture address units.
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/confused-by-number-of-tmus-nv-g80.213248/


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## agent_x007 (Jan 13, 2019)

My problem with 32 TMUs, is actual Texture Fillrate that you can measure :


Max. texture fillrate = 36,9GTex/s (with 64 TMUs), and ~18,5GTex/s with 32 TMUs.
Vantage measured : 17,1GTex/s, so...
17,1/18,5 x 100% = 92,4% efficiency.
Valid : LINK.

Here are G92 numbers :



Max. texture fillrate = 47,2GTex/s (with 64 TMUs), and ~23,6GTex/s with 32 TMUs.
Vantage measured : 21,91GTex/s...
21,91/23,6 x 100% = ~92,8% efficiency.
Valid (not mine, but feature tests are in-line) : LINK.

So, does this mean G92 is also 32 TMU design ?
If that is true, I think you should stick to one number for all Tesla class NV cards.


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## havli (Jan 13, 2019)

Well,  the 3dmark measuring can be inaccurate.... Anyway, it is just a number - some say it is 32, others say 64... you can flip the coin to choose which one you want to use.  

For example Fermi architecture has also different amount of texture filtering and texture addressing units. And for Fermi always the lower ones are used as TMU count.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_400_series


> Each SM in the GF100 contains 4 texture filtering units for every texture address unit. The complete GF100 die contains 64 texture address units and 256 texture filtering units[6] Each SM in the GF104/106/108 architecture contains 8 texture filtering units for every texture address unit. The complete GF104 die contains 64 texture address units and 512 texture filtering units, the complete GF106 die contains 32 texture address units and 256 texture filtering units and the complete GF108 die contains 16 texture address units and 128 texture filtering units


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## agent_x007 (Jan 13, 2019)

Interesting...
Let's stick to lower number then 
Thank you.


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## havli (Jan 13, 2019)

Looking at my 3dmark 06 G80 fillrate numbers it also seems too suggest there are more than 32 TMU.  Well, I just like the lower numbers and always used them. Luckily as far as I know, only G80 has questionable amount of TMUs. 

For example various 3DM06 fillrate single/multi figures of video cards measured so far:

Radeon X850 XT PE = 3616 / 8617 (16 ROP / 16 TMU @ 540 MHz)
Radeon X1900 XTX = 4997 / 10324 (16 ROP / 16 TMU @ 650 MHz)
Radeon X1950 XTX = 6151 / 10324 (16 ROP / 16 TMU @ 650 MHz)
Radeon HD 2900 GT = 3976 / 7186 (12 ROP / 12 TMU @ 600 MHz)
Radeon HD 2900 XT = 8057 / 11796 (16 ROP / 16 TMU @ 743 MHz)

GeForce 7900 GS = 5491 / 9901 (16 ROP / 20 TMU @ 500 MHz)
GeForce 7950 GT = 5706 / 12605 (16 ROP / 24 TMU @ 550 MHz)
GeForce 8600 GTS = 2729 / 7726 (8 ROP / 16 TMU @ 675 MHz)
GeForce 8800 GTS 640 = 5147 / 12149 (20 ROP / 24(48) TMU @ 513 MHz)
Quadro FX 4600 = 6054 / 11925 (24 ROP / 24(48) TMU @ 500 MHz)
GeForce 8800 Ultra = 7783 / 20328 (24 ROP / 32(64) TMU @ 650 MHz)


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## agent_x007 (Jan 13, 2019)

No, it doesn't.
20328 is within max. theoretical for 32 TMUs at 650MHz (20800).
Just like X850 XT PE for example.


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## Vayra86 (Jan 13, 2019)

This is amazing, Thank you for the effort and for sharing!


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## Dinnercore (Jan 14, 2019)

This is incredible work, I was kinda looking for something like this and thought about making it myself but did not have the patience and time. 

Thank you so much for all the effort!


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## havli (Jan 14, 2019)

Thank you all for support


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## havli (Mar 28, 2019)

Another video - Radeon X1950 Pro vs GeForce 8600 GTS


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## Vayra86 (Mar 28, 2019)

havli said:


> Another video - Radeon X1950 Pro vs GeForce 8600 GTS



Those frametime differences, wow. And now I understand why AMD users said their video output was better, look at the color difference. The AMD side is much more vivid and saturated.

Its really hit or miss in terms of frametimes in both camps depending on the game. You don't see that as much these days, overall much has improved.


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## phill (Mar 28, 2019)

Remember testing Far Cry 2 with a 4870 X2..  And playing Serious Sam 2 with a QX9650 and a 8800 GT !!  Ah, the memories   Probably still got the benchmark results as well somewhere lol


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## havli (Nov 12, 2019)

Radeon X1900 XTX vs Radeon X1800 XT... feel the power of extra pixel shaders


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## framebuffer (Nov 14, 2019)

Fantastic work!
Also the "Benchmark VGA 1998 - 2001 (2011 edition)" is very interesting and brings up a lot of memories


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## havli (Nov 27, 2019)

GeForce 8800 GTX SLI vs Radeon HD 2900 XT CF


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## basco (Nov 27, 2019)

thank you very much for this !
looking forward to the equal cards with different memory size comparison.
if ya need a card like 3850x2 or 5870 2gb or newer or others pm me


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## havli (Nov 27, 2019)

Cards with different memory size are tricky to compare. Either your games can fit even the one with less RAM -> no performance difference. Or the other possibility - one card running fine and the other one slideshow.

I have some cards to try it with, so maybe one day.


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## agent_x007 (Nov 27, 2019)

Throw enough graphics mods at game, and VRAM get's scarce REALLY fast 
How many FPS 8800 GTX get's in Crysis in "High" preset with Full HD resolution.
Enabling AA on R600s should drop performance pretty hard (since AA is done via shader cores).


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## havli (Dec 16, 2019)

Radeon HD 2600 XT vs GeForce 8600 GTS


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## havli (Jan 5, 2020)

Kaveri APU vs GeForce 8800 GTX


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## Durvelle27 (Jan 5, 2020)

You make me want to bench the GTX 260 i have sitting on my desk


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## havli (Jan 5, 2020)

Oh yeah, GTX 260 is a very nice GPU. I have.... a lot of them  Waiting for 3-way SLI action.


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## Durvelle27 (Jan 5, 2020)

havli said:


> Oh yeah, GTX 260 is a very nice GPU. I have.... a lot of them  Waiting for 3-way SLI action.


I was thinking of pairing it with a Core 2 Quad i have with 8GB of RAM


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## candle_86 (Jan 6, 2020)

Durvelle27 said:


> I was thinking of pairing it with a Core 2 Quad i have with 8GB of RAM



It will bottleneck slightly.

I did my own mini testing on a phenom x4 9950 the other day. Ran a few games and 3d mark. I tested dual 7900gtx, dual and single 8800gt, dual and single 9800gtx+, and dual and single GTX 280. What I discovered is the gtx280/dual 8800gt/dual 9800 GTX+ at 1680x1050 where 17% faster than a single 9800gtx+. But the 9800gtx was a solid 72% faster than dual 7900gtx.

What this tells me is the phenom 1st Gen sucked, but it also ties a q6600 at stock so I'd imagine an SLI gtx260 would be wasted on anything slower than a 1st Gen i7.


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## Fouquin (Jan 6, 2020)

candle_86 said:


> it also ties a q6600 at stock so I'd imagine an SLI gtx260 would be wasted on anything slower than a 1st Gen i7.



That's an interesting conclusion. There are a large selection of Core 2 Quads that are significantly faster than the Q6600.


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## candle_86 (Jan 6, 2020)

Fouquin said:


> That's an interesting conclusion. There are a large selection of Core 2 Quads that are significantly faster than the Q6600.



maybe but the affordable ones are Kentsfield and q8xxx series, the q9xxx series tend to be way over priced


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## Durvelle27 (Jan 6, 2020)

candle_86 said:


> It will bottleneck slightly.
> 
> I did my own mini testing on a phenom x4 9950 the other day. Ran a few games and 3d mark. I tested dual 7900gtx, dual and single 8800gt, dual and single 9800gtx+, and dual and single GTX 280. What I discovered is the gtx280/dual 8800gt/dual 9800 GTX+ at 1680x1050 where 17% faster than a single 9800gtx+. But the 9800gtx was a solid 72% faster than dual 7900gtx.
> 
> What this tells me is the phenom 1st Gen sucked, but it also ties a q6600 at stock so I'd imagine an SLI gtx260 would be wasted on anything slower than a 1st Gen i7.


I also have a athlon 860K and some Xeons


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## DeathtoGnomes (Jan 6, 2020)

subbed to this.


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## havli (Jan 30, 2020)

GeForce 7800 GTX vs Radeon X1800 XT









The G70 is rather.... slow :-D


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## agent_x007 (Jan 30, 2020)

I say, R520 is simply fast


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## havli (Mar 13, 2020)

3-way CF Radeon HD 3870 vs 2-way SLI GeForce 8800 GT









I must hurry with the multi-GPU tests, before the winter is over :-D


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## havli (Mar 29, 2020)

Radeon HD 4850 vs GeForce 8800 GTS 512 OC


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## havli (Jun 14, 2020)

The GPU Duels are just a small part of the whole project. If you like a ton of good old bar charts, this is the right place for you :-D http://hw-museum.cz/article/7/the-ultimate-gpu-benchmark--2004---2007-/1


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## FreedomEclipse (Jun 14, 2020)

I have a 7800GT somewhere that i should really clean up and bench.


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## phill (Jun 14, 2020)

Amazing work    Can't wait for the next batch!


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## havli (Jun 15, 2020)

Thank you  I am already working on the part 2. It should be complete within a year, maybe less :-D


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## havli (Jun 20, 2020)

GeForce 8800 GTX 3-way SLI vs Radeon HD 5870


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## ST.o.CH (Jun 28, 2020)

Awesome thread, subbed.


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## Kissamies (Jul 2, 2020)

I need to check all your work on better time, I'm pretty active on the nostalgic hardware thread and I love benchmarking old cards too. Subbed this thread too.


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## havli (Jul 26, 2020)

Radeon HD 5870 vs GeForce GTX 295


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## Kissamies (Jul 26, 2020)

havli said:


> Radeon HD 5870 vs GeForce GTX 295


Subbed, I'll check later


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## phill (Aug 2, 2020)

Such an awesome thread    Thank you so much for posting


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## havli (Feb 25, 2021)

It hase been a while... but it is time to get to work again :-D


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## havli (Mar 21, 2021)

GeForce 9600 GT vs Radeon HD 3850


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## havli (Apr 6, 2021)

Radeon HD 4870 (1 GB) vs GeForce 8800 Ultra OC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqFNyPR ... wareMuseum


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## havli (Jun 19, 2021)

GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 5970


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## havli (Jul 29, 2021)

Sad day for the R600 GPU, even at 850 MHz and paired with 2GB of GDDR4... it can't really catch the good old  GF 8800 GTX.


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## Fouquin (Jul 29, 2021)

The V8650 is such an underappreciated treasure. Cheaper than a 2900 XT 1GB, double the VRAM, and no 2D clock shenanigans to deal with in the BIOS. I've already been through a couple back when they were only $65 on eBay. Very fun additions to the R600 family.


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## havli (Aug 14, 2021)

Radeon HD 4870 vs GeForce GTX 260 192sp


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## Audioave10 (Aug 14, 2021)

This is awesome work and my funnest era of PC gaming and hardware. I currently own 11 graphics cards of this time period. 
There were 4 other ATI cards of the early days that I used to own on your list. THANKS!


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## havli (Aug 29, 2021)

The first duel of the latest methodology. 
Radeon HD 5870 vs GeForce GTX 480


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## havli (Feb 5, 2022)

Radeon R9 270X vs GeForce GTX 760


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## havli (Mar 12, 2022)

Anyone up for reading a huge amount of charts?  
Second part of my GPU benchmark is ready to go public. It took about year and half to measure everything. Partially because of too optimistic CPU OC - which was unstable as hell and cost me a ton of time. Also multiGPU was a huge pain sometimes - for instance I couldn't bench 3-way CF of Radeon HD 4870, it simply overheated too much to run reliably. 

The methodology is similar to the first part of the test, but some new games and/or more demanding settings of course. In the end 51 GPUs made it to the article. Originnaly even more were planned, but they were eventually axed  For instance all iGPUs. Unfortunately even the Xbox APU, which is interesting piece of HW, but drivers are too much pain as well as the Jaguar CPU part. 

This time I decided to switch the interactive charts to show 1% low fps next to the avg. 1% is more or less the standard these days. Also originally I had different algorithm that showed something like 25% low. That didn't really work well for anything other than textbook example of microstuttering, so from now on 1% it is.

It took me almost a week of time to put the article together. Enjoy  





						Hardware museum
					






					hw-museum.cz


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## QuietBob (Mar 12, 2022)

Amazing job! Thank you for putting it together and sharing the results of your hard work!


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## phill (Mar 14, 2022)

Please keep up the amazing work my good sir!!     Outstanding efforts and videos!!  Looking forward to the next one!!


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## havli (Jun 20, 2022)




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## havli (Oct 2, 2022)

Here we go - the end of the line  






						Hardware museum
					






					hw-museum.cz
				




The whole project is finished now. It wasn't 100% smooth sailing, but more or less everything went as planned. Maybe I will make some Duel video in the future, but no promises. Depends if I can find some unused source videos on my HDD. 

In the upcoming weeks, I will take apart the test rig and move onto different project. Stay tuned


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## agent_x007 (Oct 3, 2022)

Maybe testing DX10/11 GPUs in WinXP ?


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## havli (Oct 3, 2022)

Actually, I will take a long break from testing GPUs. Instead, I'll return to testing processors  Starting with Conroe and up to almost present time.


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## havli (Dec 27, 2022)

I still have some source materials for GPU duels, so here is one of them 

GeForce GTX 580 OC vs Radeon HD 7950 Boost


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