What's going on here? X700 not really as powerful as 6600go?

Alright all, I have a z71v and I've really been keen on the z70va and was just looking at some reviews, then came across some speed tests and I must say they really got me thinking: is the x700 just optimized for 3dmark05?

The stock x700 is at 350/300 (core/memory) and gets 2500+ on 3Dmark05
The stock 6600go is at 250/250 and gets 1800+ on 3Dmark05. If we overclock the 6600go to 320/360 (or 350/300 with good cooling of the core) we also get also get 2500+ in 3Dmark05.

So clock for clock, they are the same speed, but the z70va has a much better stock cooling solution, and i'm sure it can also be overclocked to produce 3dmark05 scores as high as 3000+.

Now here's the wierd kicker people, inspite of the x700 getting a very respectible 2500+ in 3Dmark05, it gets only 40.7fps at 1024x768 in doom3 while our 6600go gets 1800 3dmark05 at stock but gets 49.2fps at 1024x768 in doom3. If we overclock, (to where we're hitting 2200-2500 3dmark05) we get around 65-70fps at 1024x768 in doom3!!! Any comments?

Sounds like some kind of spoof or optimization for 3dmark05 which doesn't reflect real performance! Now i'm real curios about other applications! Is our 6600go really that much more powerful than the x700?! Anyone want to test farcry, aquamark, etc? DirectX 8 and 9 games would be good!

As mentioned, I have a z71v and can test the 6600go, but I need someone to give us their results from the x700.

 

ATI's cards tend to be optimized for DirectX and Nvidia's cards tend to be optimized for OpenGL. Doom 3 is an OpenGL game. There ya go.

 

Haha, yeah, that's what i was just concluding in another forum...

 

Don't forget that the Doom 3 was made to do really well with Nvidia whereas Halflife shines on ATI cards.

 

Very true. I also decided to overclock my video subsystem and see what I could get...

Using Forceware 78.01 I got the following with 3DMark05 (remember the stock 6600go doesn't do nearly as well as the x700 in 3DMark05, yet still wails the x700 in doom3 and the sim2 at high graphics... so imagine what this would do if i had those programs to test!)

335MHz Core/780MHz Memory --> 2578 Marks!!

Not bad. I told ya this sucker had some crazy overclocking potential. Keep in mind, I have done NO physical modifcations and I'm using the TERRIBLY poor cooling solution (although I only peaked at 85 deg C instead of the usual 100+ deg C in UT2004)

 

Hmm you've rig your GPU heatsink?

I seriously need to rig that heatsink!

 

dude, i didn't do ANYTHING. I have pulled apart my heatsink to look at it and was gonna make my own out of copper, but the shape and all was too hard unless i got it machined. So when i put it back on, i did put a little arctic silver on both sides of the thermal pad (hell, it's not gonna make it worse, but probably not gonna do anything). As it turns out, it did drop the temperature by a few degress, but that's nothing. It's still horribly inefficient and hitting 93-95 deg C at stock when I play unreal. 3Dmark must not stress it as much, cuz it peaked at 85, but that was not cuz of any mods.

ANyway, i just wanted to see what it could do. ANd it did pretty well. I was especially surprised with how high the memory could go! With a good heatsink, we should be able to run the core at the x700 speed. Which would make the 6600go faster than the x700. However, I think the x700 is more efficient with power managament (since it seems the z70va gets better battery life) and who knows what they'd get if they had a modded heatsink. Their RAM is 350MHz Samsung (DDR 700) too vs our Hynix 300MHz (DDR 600) RAM. But then we have DX 9c vs. their DX 9b... so we get a bit better quality, supposedly.

 

Watch out for the 64 MB version of the x700. It is much slower than the 6600 and about 40% slower than the 128 x700. 64 bit ram is the culprit.

 

64-bit memory buses are quite terrible for any 3D application. You'll get 25-50% less framerates.

For the latest games, you want to have 128MB or more of memory.