Gf4 4600 vs 8500 in vertex throughput

[fresh]

I found an old benchmark up on Nvidia's site called SphereMark :

http://developer.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=SphereMark

For some reason I get odd scores, and I'd like to know if anyone has any ideas as to why. Oh my dual Win2k SP3 , Athlon XP 2000+ , 1.5gb ram, Gf4 4600 128mb, I get a score between 70-80 (press space bar when the app starts). On my other machine - Win2k SP3, XP 1600, 512mb ram, Radeon 8500 64mb, I get 170-180. That's a drastic difference especially considering the code is using Nvidia extensions (source code is on the same site)!

Just curious..

 

[Dave Baumann]

There appears to be two numberings - on a 9000 PRO I'm getting '14.1 Ball Marks' and the number in the bottom left reads 123. Which number are you talking about?

 

[fresh]

There appears to be two numberings - on a 9000 PRO I'm getting '14.1 Ball Marks' and the number in the bottom left reads 123. Which number are you talking about?

I'm talking about the number on the bottom, which is apparently the frame rate. I simply run the program, then press the space bar. Btw, I'm using 29.42 version drivers for the Gf4 and 2.2 Catalyst for the Radeon.

 

[Bambers]

hmm I get 200-220 on my 8500

You sure you haven't got vsync enabled on the gf? I got 70ish fps on my geforce256 i think.

 

[Basic]

I asume you're talking about the framerate in the lower left corner. (Dave: How did you get that other number?)
It seems low since I get ~78 fps on a P3-600 + GF2. Have you maybe accidentaly pressed any other key to change the rendering mode? Or maybe run it with AF, AA, or vsync on.

 

[Dave Baumann]

(Dave: How did you get that other number?)

Its in the title bar when the bench finishes.

 

[fresh]

hmm I get 200-220 on my 8500

You sure you haven't got vsync enabled on the gf? I got 70ish fps on my geforce256 i think.

Doh!!!! I had Vsync on. I didn't even know you could enable vsync in windowed applications! How the hell does vsync in a windowed application make sense? I get 260-300 now, which is more like it I feel stupid now, hehe.

 

[KimB]

It's simple, really...vsync in a windowed application works just like it does in a fullscreen app. The back buffer that contains the rendering window isn't copied into the front buffer (the screen that is displayed) until vblank.

The benchmark on my machine shows:
31 (Display List, TriStrips)
36 (Vertex Array, Triangles)
11.8 (SphereMap DL, TriStrips, 4 lights)

Do Shift+B for the long benchmark to display these results.

Btw, this was on a GeForce4 Ti 4200 64MB, not overclocked.

 

[Neeyik]

Nice little tool that; you can learn a lot about how certain rendering techniques can aid performance and visual quality. Top fun playing about with culling, arrays/lists, etc...

Quick benchmark on GF4 Ti4600 (while working at the same time!) gave:

40 Display List
43.1 Vertex Array
13.6 SphereMap DL 4 lights

The number of tris/sec is obviously limited by the fact that there is a cap to the number of balls you can have on screen at once.