I have been finishing up a low budget video card comparison when I ran into some oddities surrounding the ATI Radeon 7500.  I ran the tests again, no fewer than 20 times per resolution and kept getting the same results. I double checked the BIOS, Windows Display Settings, Driver files, Video Card Settings, Ram Timings, Direct X Settings, etc. and still obtained the same results.

System Setup:
AMD Athlon XP 1900+ (1.6GHz)

Abit KR7A-Raid

512MB DDR PC2100 Mushkin Generic RAM

ATI RADEON 7500
Driver build 6.13.10.6071
and
Driver build 6.13.10.6043

2 x 40GB Maxtor D740X-6L ATA 133
Afreey 56X CD-ROM

Windows XP Professional

DirectX 8.1

Desktop Resolution: 800x600x32

Disputed Benchmark:
Jedi Knight II – High Quality (jk2ffa demo)

Benchmarking Procedure:

There are two methods of benchmarking in Jedi Knight II. One option is to create a shortcut to the Jedi Knight II multiplayer executable and add “+set sv_cheats 1” to the target field of the shortcut. When entered correctly it would look like this:

"C:\\Program Files\\LucasArts\\Star Wars JK II Jedi Outcast\\GameData\\jk2mp.exe" +set sv_cheats 1

Once the program is started and you've properly configured your display settings you hold the Shift + Tilde (~) Keys to bring down the in game console. Once in the console you then type "timedemo 1" and press the enter(return) key and then start the demo by typing "demo jk2ffa" and press enter (return) again. The demo should start automatically if you have done this correctly. To see the results of the benchmark after the demo has ended press Shift + Tilde (~) again and press the "Page Up" key until you see the results.

The second option involves running the multiplayer executable and typing the following in the console (use Shift + Tilde ~ to get to the console):

devmap ffa_bespin
timedemo 1
disconnect
demo jk2ffa

Once the demo is complete enter the console and page up to see your frame rate.

Problem:
When benchmarking the Radeon 7500 with Jedi Knight II I would get abnormally low results for all results over 1024x768 (in High Quality 32bit). 16Bit results seem to be not affected.

Test:
I got to the bottom of this by first checking for any errors and then trying the previous version of ATI's Drivers (build 6043).

Here are the results (Note results are averaged after 20-50 tests are run):

Here are the screenshots of the benchmarks for some authentication. The screen shots reflect the average fps of all the benchmarks for the specified resolution:

	Build 6043	Build 6071
800x600	(81.9 FPS)	(81.6 FPS)
1024x768	(81.4 FPS)	(80.2 FPS)
1280x1024	(78.6 FPS)	(23.6 FPS)
1600x1200	(57.8 FPS)	(16.2 FPS)

Answers:
All of the evidence seems to point to the build 6071 drivers. If you are having similar problems with these drivers and ATI Cards feel free to E-Mail me. We'll also be waiting for an official response from ATI regarding our inquiry.

Solution:
Until we get to the bottom of this I recommend using the Build 6043 drivers which seem to be more reliable under the given circumstances. Or maybe you should go download some of those beta drivers for some stability ;)