The 3DMark 2003 benchmark has seen its fair share of "driver tweaking" controversy, but as long as the mainstream gaming community is using it, we'll present comparison scores. It does offer a view at potential DirectX 9 gaming performance, as well as offering a specific CPU test and a fully-featured Image Quality suite that was lacking in the 2001SE version. These tests have been performed using default settings at 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 resolutions.
In comparison to the previous 3DMark 2001SE Pro benchmarking, the addition of DirectX 9 seems to favor the Radeon 9800 XT OD a bit more. The overall scores are lower than in 3DMark 2001, but the relative gap between the Radeon 9800 XT and the other cards has grown. This is also true in the Radeon 9800 XT standard vs. OD comparison, and the additional DirectX 9 load results in a larger payoff with the OverDrive feature enabled.
The increase in detail using 4X AA and 8X AF settings doesn't really translate like we had hoped. Certainly, the Radeon 9800 XT is well ahead of the ATI pack, but enabling the OD option only raises the score by a nominal amount.
GunMetal is another DirectX 9 benchmark test, and uses the basic game engine (think Manga-based armor) to really stress a video card's subsystem. This is another very rough game test that uses 2X AA as default, so don't be surprised at the low framerate scores.
GunMetal benchmark testing looks to be a non-issue between the two Radeon 9800 XT modes. The low framerates certainly contribute to this, as the Radeon 9800 XT with OverDrive is at the top of the chart, but with a high score of only 25 fps, it's tough to outrun the competition by a noticeable margin.
The 4X AA and 8X AF settings really don't change the status quo with GunMetal, and once again the Radeon 9800 XT OD performs about on-par with the standard mode results.