ATI's New High End and Mid Range: Radeon X1950 XTX & X1900 XT 256MB
by Derek Wilson on August 23, 2006 9:52 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Performance
We make use of the Lighthouse demo for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. We have been using this benchmark for quite some time and facilitate automation with the scripts published at Beyond 3D. This benchmark is fairly close to in game performance for our system, but midrange users may see a little lower real world performance when tested with a lower speed processor.
Our settings all used the highest quality level possible including the extra SM3.0 features. As the advanced shaders and antialiasing are mutually exclusive under SC:CT, we left AA disabled and focused on the former. We set anisotropic filtering to 8x for all cards.
For this 3rd person stealth game, ultra high frame rates are not necessary. We have a good playing experience at 25 fps or higher. There may be the framerate junkie out there who likes it a little higher, but our recommendation is based on consistency of experience and ability to play the game without a degraded experience.
NVIDIA's 7900 GTX SLI does almost as well as X1900 CrossFire, but the 14% advantage X1950 CF has over X1900 CF puts it way out in front. The 7950 GX2 once again splits the difference between the X1950 XTX and the 7900 GTX SLI.
While X1950 XTX leads all the single-GPU single-card solutions, there really isn't that much difference between the playability of the X1900 XTX, 7900 GTX, and X1900 XT. The extra 256MB of RAM the original X1900 XT has does give it a 7.5% advantage over it's baby brother at this resolution.
ATI leads again in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, both in dual-GPU and single-GPU configurations. Here the GX2 occupies a nice middle ground, and all of the tested cards manage to remain playable up through 2048x1536. Using the "Chuck Patch" it is also possible to enable AA+HDR on ATI hardware, though time constraints and the fact that there is no NVIDIA equivalent caused us to skip this test for now.
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JarredWalton - Thursday, August 24, 2006 - link
Anisotropic filtering was enabled in all tests at 8xAF as far as I know. When we use antialiasing, we generally enable anisotropic filtering as well.LoneWolf15 - Thursday, August 24, 2006 - link
Looks like there's no HDCP support or HDMI connector added like I'd expect with a brand new top-end card. And, they didn't add the new quieter cooler to the X1900XT. Pity. I doubt it would cost ATI more, and it'd up the sale of cards since people hate the noisy fan ATI has been currently using.I'll pass. My older (by alpha-geek standards) X800XL does the job fine.
P.S. -1 for not doing any bench tests with Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.
DerekWilson - Saturday, August 26, 2006 - link
also, all of these cards have HDCP support -- which I believe I mentioned somewhere in there. HDMI is up to the vendor.JarredWalton - Thursday, August 24, 2006 - link
+2 You might want to read page 8.LoneWolf15 - Thursday, August 24, 2006 - link
I don't know what's going on, I must have been blind. My apologies there, Jarred.Dfere - Thursday, August 24, 2006 - link
You just can't always eat your cake and then have it left over.YOu should change your phrase from "Sometimes we can have our cake and eat it too"
to "Sometimes we can eat our cake and have it too"
poohbear - Thursday, August 24, 2006 - link
the established exnglish expression is "you cant have your cake and eat it too", even if it doesnt make logical sense. There are many words and expressions that dont make sense in english (driveway, football, highway). Im guessing you're not a native english speaker, but that's the way the language is. now, please post about technology and not the logic of english expressions.Griswold - Thursday, August 24, 2006 - link
Whats wrong with football? Or do you mean american "football"?poohbear - Thursday, August 24, 2006 - link
can anyone confirm if those power consumption tests are for the entire system or just the vid cards? the highest figure was 267wts: a high end system that consumes 267wts underload is sweet! can you confirm that is indeed for the entire system (cpu, mobo, hdd, vid card... everything). thanks.JarredWalton - Thursday, August 24, 2006 - link
I'm pretty sure that this is power use for the entire system, but Derek's results are quite a bit lower than what I got on the ABS system I tested last week for X1900 CrossFire. Of course, the water cooling and extra fans on the ABS system might add a decent amount of power draw, and I don't know how "loaded" the systems are in this test. I would guess that Derek ran Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory for load conditions.