Thomas Bruckschlegel of TommTi-Systems has somehow enabled the R350 driver path, which is naturally present in the latest ATI beta drivers v6307, to work on R300 hardware a.k.a Radeon 9700 Pro / 9700 / 9500 Pro / 9500. Modifications were performed on ati2mtag.sys. The interesting thing about this modification is that it brings a slight performance increase in various applications. Also the control panel detects the changed driver path correctly. Read More...
Thomas at first thought these differences were a result of normal performance fluctuations. But since they were reproducable he concluded that the hardware difference between R300 and R350 might not be as large as ATI would like us to believe. He used the following software. Note that the number in brackets shows the approximate performance difference to standard R300 path. Test System: Athlon XP 1800+ Radeon 9700 Pro Windows XP SP1 Results: Fablemark [4%] 3DMark 03 | 1024x768 Default | [3-5%] 3DMark 03 | 1024x768 16x AF | [up to 20%] 3DMark 03 | 1024x768 2x FSAA | [up to 10%] 3DMark 03 | 1024x768 4x FSAA | [up to 10%] 3DMark 2001 SE | 1600x1200 | [Pixel Shader 1.1 40%; generally faster] 3DMark 2001 SE | 1600x1200 16x AF | [generally faster] ATI Island Demo 1 [partially 19% faster] Shader Mark 1.7 | DX8 | [generally faster] Shader Mark 1.7 | DX9 | [even more faster] Shader Mark 1.7 | DX9 PS2.0 | [up to 23% faster] Z-Reject Overdraw Tester 1.6 | [up to 4% faster] Interesting results indeed. Please note that Thomas' website is in german and has some notorious popups with exit popup. You can find the charts to the listing above here.
Thomas at first thought these differences were a result of normal performance fluctuations. But since they were reproducable he concluded that the hardware difference between R300 and R350 might not be as large as ATI would like us to believe. He used the following software. Note that the number in brackets shows the approximate performance difference to standard R300 path. Test System: Athlon XP 1800+ Radeon 9700 Pro Windows XP SP1 Results: Fablemark [4%] 3DMark 03 | 1024x768 Default | [3-5%] 3DMark 03 | 1024x768 16x AF | [up to 20%] 3DMark 03 | 1024x768 2x FSAA | [up to 10%] 3DMark 03 | 1024x768 4x FSAA | [up to 10%] 3DMark 2001 SE | 1600x1200 | [Pixel Shader 1.1 40%; generally faster] 3DMark 2001 SE | 1600x1200 16x AF | [generally faster] ATI Island Demo 1 [partially 19% faster] Shader Mark 1.7 | DX8 | [generally faster] Shader Mark 1.7 | DX9 | [even more faster] Shader Mark 1.7 | DX9 PS2.0 | [up to 23% faster] Z-Reject Overdraw Tester 1.6 | [up to 4% faster] Interesting results indeed. Please note that Thomas' website is in german and has some notorious popups with exit popup. You can find the charts to the listing above here.
