The specs
We've rounded up quite a mix of competitors for the Radeon 9000 Pro, but before we get into the benchmarks, let's take a look at how these cards' theoretical fill rates and memory bandwidths stack up.

  Core clock (MHz) Pixel pipelines Peak fill rate (Mpixels/s)Texture units per pixel pipeline Peak fill rate (Mtexels/s) Memory clock (MHz) Memory bus width (bits) Peak memory bandwidth (GB/s)
GeForce4 MX 4402702540210804001286.4
GeForce3 Ti 2001754700214004001286.4
GeForce4 Ti 4200 128MB25041000220004441287.1
GeForce32004800216004601287.4
Radeon 75002902580317404601287.4
GeForce3 Ti 5002404960219205001288.0
GeForce4 Ti 4200 64MB25041000220005001288.0
Radeon 8500LE25041000220005001288.0
Radeon 9000 Pro27541100111005501288.8
GeForce4 MX 4603002600212005501288.8
GeForce4 Ti 4400 27541100222005501288.8
Radeon 8500 128MB27541100222005501288.8
GeForce4 Ti 4600300412002240065012810.4

At first glance, the Radeon 9000 Pro appears to be a poor replacement for the Radeon 8500, whose multi-texturing fill rate is much higher. What the chip comparison doesn't show is the Radeon 9000 Pro's ability to loop back within the pipeline and apply up to six textures per pass.

NVIDIA's GeForce4 MX 460, a rare bird in the wild, looks like the Radeon 9000 Pro's most immediate competitor, at least in terms of theoretical fill rate and memory bandwidth. The Radeon 9000 Pro's incredibly low street price undercuts what few GeForce4 MX 460s can be found for sale, however.

Our testing methods
As ever, we did our best to deliver clean benchmark numbers. All tests were run three times, and the results were averaged.

Motherboard

Abit AT7 MAX

Processor

AMD Athlon XP 1800+

Front-side bus

2x133MHz

Chipset

VIA KT333

North bridge

VIA KT333 (VT8367)

South bridge

VT8233A

Memory size

512MB (2 DIMMs)

Memory type

PC2700 DDR SDRAM

Graphics

GeForce4 Ti 4600
   GeForce4 Ti 4400
   GeForce4 Ti 4200 128MB
GeForce4 Ti 4200 64MB
   GeForce4 MX 460
GeForce4 MX 440
GeForce3
   GeForce3 Ti 500
   GeForce3
   GeForce3 Ti 200

Radeon 8500LE
Radeon 8500 128MB
 Radeon 9000 Pro

Graphics driver

 NVIDIA 29.42

ATI 7.74

Storage

IBM 60GXP 40GB 7200RPM ATA/100 hard drive

Operating System

Windows XP Professional

Never before at TR have we benchmarked so many different graphics cards against each other. Folks, the graphs are going to get pretty wild. With so many results, our analysis will focus mainly on how the Radeon 9000 Pro fares against its most direct competition in the GeForce4 MX, and against its estranged father, the Radeon 8500. Of course, we've left all the other results in there to bring your modem to its knees, and to give you an idea where the Radeon 9000 Pro's performance sits in the grand scheme of things.

We used the following versions of our test applications:

The test system's Windows desktop was set at 1024x768 in 32-bit color at a 75Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests. Most of the 3D gaming tests used the high detail image quality settings in 32-bit color.

All the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.