Test System Setup

Processor(s): AMD Athlon X2 3800+
Motherboard(s): ASUS A8N SLI Premium (Supplied by ASUS)
Memory: 2 X 512MB Mushkin PC4000 DDR (Supplied by Mushkin)
Hard Disk(s): WD Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM SATA (Supplied by Western Digital)
Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP1
Drivers: ATI Catalyst 5.9 and 5.10 and DX9c


Since last month’s Cat 5.9 driver article, nothing at all has changed on our test system as we are still utilizing our Athlon X2, ASUS motherboard and regular bits.

We saw this month in our article that nVidia released some new BETA drivers on nZone that have really shown benefits to their line of cards to add more fire to their GeForce 7 series of GPU.

We have our fingers crossed that ATI have worked extra hard this month to give us a release that is a bit more exciting then bug fixes to combat nVidia’s driver efforts in Forceware 81.84 BETA.

Let’s get started and find out what Terry and the driver team over at ATI in Canada have come up with!


3DMark03

Version and / or Patch Used: Build 340
Developer Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com
Product Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmark03/
Buy It Here




By combining full DX8 and partial DX9 support with completely new tests and graphics over the previous version, 3DMark03 continues the legacy of being the industry standard 3D benchmark.

Please Note: Due to recent events with the 3DMark03 series, we are adding results purely for those who are still in favor of 3DMark03. These results should not be taken too seriously and are only added for interest sakes.




We can see a performance increase in the X700PRO and X850XT cards but the lower end X550 doesn’t get any performance gains with this release in 3DMark03.