xlr8yourmac recently posted up results of a test that compares ATI's Radeon to
Nvidia's GeForce 2, both in OS9.1 and OSX version 10.0.1 (the unofficial update
that was floating around this week) environments. Both cards were AGP, with the tests
being done on a G4 533 dual processor. The testing medium was the 117 build of Quake 3, the version
Omnigroup ported over for the OSX beta.

Though the more technical points of the comparison may not hold much interest for the casual gamer,
the hard numbers, specifically frames per second, should spark some interest. In OS9,
the GeForce 2 seems to be the clear winner, with an average 7 fps advantage over the Radeon
when viewed in 640x480 resolution mode (67.1 vs. 61 fps in 32-bit mode). If you normally play at a higher resolution, the advantage becomes less clear.

However, when run under OSX, it's the Radeon that edges out the GeForce 2 by almost 7 fps, when viewed in the same
resolution and bit mode as above (116.5 vs. 110.1 fps). Obviously both the NVIDIA and Radeon drivers are still in development for Apple's next-generation systems, as is the Omni Development port. Those numbers seem to indicate that the multiprocessor support added to Q3A is in full effect.

It is important to remember that this benchmark is only in Q3A -- this is far from a comprehensive benchmark or comparison of the two cards, just a simple data point for comparison. Several factors,
including the fact that a Q3 beta was being used, as well as the fact that sound was disabled for it to work under OSX, may
be playing with the numbers a bit. Overall it shows amazing frame rates on both sides -- many of those numbers are equivalent to those seen on 1 GHz PCs! The strength of NVIDIA's driver development is obvious, and we can't wait to see what they come up with next. If we have both the GeForce 3 and ATI's next-gen card on the Mac this Summer, our days of gazing in envy at PC gaming machines might very well be over.

Nvidia Official Site

ATI Technologies

xlr8yourmac.com - GeForce2 vs. Radeon

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