Doom 3 is the most advanced OpenGL game to date, it
takes advantage of the latest videocard technology and pushes the processing
power of the CPU to its absolute limits. At its highest setting Ultra quality,
texture sizes pass the 500MB mark which means even tomorrows videocards will
have a hard time running everything. The frame rates in the game itself are
locked at 60 fps so anything above that
point is wasted. Each test is run three times and with the third run being
recorded.
| Doom 3 - LQ 640x480 |
| Video Card |
FPS |
Ranking |
| Albatron
Trinity PC5900 |
60.4 |
   |
| PowerColor
Radeon 9250 |
15.6 |
   |
| PowerColor Radeon 9250 (346/221) |
16.2 |
|
| Doom 3 - LQ 1024x768 |
| Video Card |
FPS |
Ranking |
| Albatron
Trinity PC5900 |
37.4 |
|
| PowerColor
Radeon 9250 |
7.2 |
|
| PowerColor Radeon 9250 (346/221) |
7.4 |
|
| Doom 3 - HQ 1024x768 |
| Video Card |
FPS |
Ranking |
| Albatron
Trinity PC5900 |
30.7 |
|
| PowerColor
Radeon 9250 |
7 |
|
| PowerColor Radeon 9250 (346/221) |
7.2 |
|
| Doom 3 - HQ 1600x1200 |
| Video Card |
FPS |
Ranking |
| Albatron
Trinity PC5900 |
16.4 |
|
| PowerColor
Radeon 9250 |
3.1 |
|
| PowerColor Radeon 9250 (346/221) |
3.1 |
|
These
results should not be a surprise to anyone. Doom 3 is a lot to handle for even
the highest end card, and it is quite remarkable that the ATI Radeon 9250 was
able to handle it at even these speeds..
Conclusions:
The average person lives within their
means and needs, and that's probably why most novice computer users do not
buy state of the art CPU's, enthusiast calibre memory or $500 videocards.
Instead they get what they need, and there's nothing wrong with that.
For those of you who are looking for a stock
office box or PC for your kids to do their homework on, the PowerColor
Radeon 9250 is exactly what you're looking for. It's inexpensive, and has
excellent 2D image quality, and its dead quiet. Sure the little critters won't
be able to play their favorite games, but isn't it better that way? ;-)
With a retail price of $62 CDN ($47 US) the PowerColor Radeon
9250 is quite affordable if you need to outfit an entire office of PCs, and
being a half height card would make a great solution for servers since it needs
no active cooling. If you plan to take advantage of the videocard's TV output
options you'll appreciate that PowerColor did at least include the necessary
cables. Should you want to connect a second analog monitor to the PC, you'll
have to get yourself a DVI to analog converter because one is not included in
the package. From where we sit, the PowerColor Radeon 9250 is most definitely a low end
videocard, and for those applications where a low end graphics card is required,
it does the job admirably.
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