Pixel Shader - 3DMark Tests

Here we'll take a look at the relative pixel shader performances using a variety of the 3DMark feature tests.

Pixel Shader - PS1.1 (FPS) 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
6800 Ultra 260.4 260.6 259.1 250.5 235.4
5950 Ultra 249.8 242.0 227.4 150.7 107.8
5900 Ultra 250.0 241.1 221.4 143.9 102.9
5800 Ultra 248.4 240.4 196.7 125.9 89.6
6800 Ultra % Difference 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
5950 Ultra 4.2% 7.7% 13.9% 66.2% 118.4%
5900 Ultra 4.2% 8.1% 17.0% 74.1% 128.8%
5800 Ultra 4.8% 8.4% 31.7% 99.0% 162.7%

With the PS1.1 "Pixel Shader" test in 3DMark2001SE we see that the 6800 Ultra and 5950 are system limited at the low resolutions, with the 5950 mostly becoming fill-rate (pixel shader) bound at 1024x768 and beyond. The 6800 Ultra, however, stays system limited, with only some small fill-rate limitations showing beyond 1024x768. By 1600x1200 the 6800 Ultra shows twice the performance of the 5950.

Advanced Shader (PS1.4) 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
6800 Ultra 762.9 622.8 461.7 323.2 239.1
5950 Ultra 224.9 176.4 130.8 90.1 66.5
5900 Ultra 214.8 169.1 124.6 85.9 63.4
5800 Ultra 211.2 167.6 124.8 86.6 64.2
6800 Ultra % Difference 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
5950 Ultra 239.2% 253.1% 253.0% 258.7% 259.5%
5900 Ultra 255.2% 268.3% 270.5% 276.3% 277.1%
5800 Ultra 261.2% 271.6% 270.0% 273.2% 272.4%

With 3DMark2001SE's PS1.4 "Advanced Shader" test we see quite huge performance differences between the 6800 Ultra and the 5950. With 4 times the number of pipelines and both and ALU pipeline that enables the 6800 Ultra to access textures and PS1.4 modifiers in the same clock cycle, it's not surprising there is quite a high performance difference between this and the 5950 performance - here is is approaching 4 times the performance.

Pixel Shader 2.0 (PS2.0) 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
6800 Ultra 222.8 190.1 152.2 115.1 92.5
5950 Ultra 69.6 61.5 52.0 41.5 34.0
5900 Ultra 66.3 58.6 49.6 39.4 32.4
5800 Ultra 54.5 48.1 40.6 32.2 26.3
6800 Ultra % Difference 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
5950 Ultra 220.1% 209.1% 192.7% 177.3% 172.1%
5900 Ultra 236.0% 224.4% 206.9% 192.1% 185.5%
5800 Ultra 308.8% 295.2% 274.9% 257.5% 251.7%

The gains for the 6800 Ultra over the 5950 in the 3DMark03 PS2.0 test aren't quite as great as the PS1.4 increases, though that might not be wholly due to the pixel shader performance but rather the nuances of this particular test. Here we see performance differences approaching 3 times the performance for the 6800 Ultra at high resolutions.