HIS Excalibur X600 XT PCIE

Author: Jani 'Japala' Pönkkö Published: 31.08.2004 Manufacturer: HIS Product group: Video

Benchmarks

While there are not that many different graphics cards offered for PCIE at this time, we decided to use PCX5750 card as reference from nVidia side. While PCX5750 is bit cheaper than the X600 XT it should still gives us at least some bases to analyze what these cards can do and how they match up.

3DMark03 by Futuremark

3DMark03 by Futuremark

3DMark®03 is the latest version of the highly favoured 3DMark series. By combining full DirectX®9.0a support with completely new tests and graphics, 3DMark03 Pro continues the legacy of being the industry standard benchmark. The high quality game tests, image quality tests, sound tests and others give you an extremely accurate overview of your system's current gaming performance. Benchmarking has never been so good!

3DMark03 Results

3DMark03 offers good synthetic benchmark in DirectX world. I'll walk you through the graph because it may not be the most simple one to look at.

First we have a run with 1024x768 with no anti-aliasing. The CPU was running with 2.8 GHz so we can determine how the power of VPU scales with the CPU. As you can see, the performance difference to the third bar, measured with CPU running in 3.4 GHz is relatively minimal. So the limiting factor isn't the CPU in these following tests. This also tells that the card is very usable even with bit slower systems.

Reference PCX5750 with a CPU running at 3.4 GHz falls behind immediatelly. Over 1000 points is a lot which way you look at it. Red bar indicated the overclocked value and the blue bar on top of it will show the results got with stock speeds. Overclocked X600 XT with AA on hits almost the same numbers as 5750 without it.

Overclocking gives a nice 13% boost over the stock speeds and you receive all this with no added noise. We used Rage3D Tweak to overclock the X600 XT and because the task is so easy to perform, I see no point not to recommend this procedure to everyone that want to have all the juice squeezed out of their GFX cards with no added costs.

Aquamark 3 by Massive Development

Aquamark 3 by Massive Development

AquaMark3 is a powerful tool to determine reliable information about the gaming performance of a computer system. Because the benchmark extensively utilizes DirectX9, DirectX8 and DirectX7 functionality, it represents the requirements of typical gaming applications in 2003 and 2004. To make the benchmark as easy to use as possible, AquaMark3 offers a great variety of standardized and used defineable evaluation schemes. Intuitive visual output formats help to easily compare results to each other. Unlike synthetic benchmarks, AquaMark allows benchmarking in a real-world scenario, with an engine and art assets showing the complexity of current state-of-the-art games.

Aquamark 3 Results

PCX5750 is slower in every part of this DirectX benchmark. Difference isn't huge but nevertheless clear. Overclocked X600 XT gains good amount of speed over the stock card and it seems to affect all parts of the test evenly. For mid-range card, the results are quite good with this 1024x768 no AA test. Quality was set to highest possible setting.

Doom 3 by id Software

Doom 3 by id Software

Science has unlocked the gates to the unknown, and now only one man stands between Hell and Earth. A sci-fi horror masterpiece, DOOM 3 is like nothing you have experienced. Dramatic storyline, pulse-pounding action, incredible graphics, and revolutionary technology combine to draw you into the most frightening and gripping first person gaming experience ever created.

Doom 3 Results

First up we have PCX5750 in this futuristic OpenGL game. With the lowest quality and all the tabs set to off, we receive a playable framerate of 36,3. Again this was got with 1024x768x32 and without anti-aliasing. Doom 3's OpenGL engine is very interesting because it draws very beautifull graphics with even resolution of 800x600 and perhaps that is the way where owners of these 5700 cards should go. 6600 GT should offer something better for budget minded people that prefer nVidia over ATi. Hopefully in near future we can update our Doom 3 results for that graphics core too.

With all the extras on and medium setting, the HIS X600 XT overclocked hits 34,3. Graphics in this level are very beautifull because all the shadows and bumpmapping effects are utilized. As we rise the quality level the speed naturally goes down and with ultra setting we only have ~22 fps left. At this level the game is not that playable and this setting should be left for higher end cards. Perhaps low quality with all the extras or medium quality with some extras disable would be the sweet spot for this card when you consider both the speed and appearance. Overclocking gives around 13% boost as we saw with 3DMark03 and in Doom 3 it means that the gamer gets around 4-5 frames more per second. Not bad at all.

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