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
Half-Life 2: Episode One Performance
Episode One of the new Half-Life 2 series makes use of recent Source engine updates to include Valve's HDR technology. While some people have done HDR that won't allow antialiasing (even on ATI cards), Valve put a high value on building an HDR implementation that everyone can use with whatever settings they want. Consistency of experience is usually not important enough to developers who care about pushing the bleeding edge of technology, so we are very happy to see Valve going down this path.
We use the built-in timedemo feature to benchmark the game. Our timedemo consists of a protracted rocket launcher fight and features much debris and pyrotechnics. The source engine timedemo feature is more like the nettimedemo of Id's Doom 3 engine, in that it plays back more than just the graphics. In fact, Valve includes some fairly intensive diagnostic tools that will reveal almost everything about every object in a scene. We haven't found a good use for this in the context of reviewing computer hardware, but our options are always open.
The highest visual quality settings possible were used including the "reflect all" setting which is normally not enabled by default. Antialiasing was left disabled for this test, and anisotropic filtering was set at 8x. While the Source engine is notorious for giving great framerates for almost any hardware setup, we find the game isn't as enjoyable if it isn't running at at least 30fps. This is very attainable even at the highest resolution we tested on most cards, and thus our target framerate is a little higher in this game than others.
Most of the solutions scale the same in Half-Life 2: Episode 1, with the possible exception of the 7900 GTX SLI setup hitting a bit of an NVIDIA driver inspired CPU limitation at 1280x1024. We can't really complain, as scoring over 200 fps is really an accomplishment in itself. With scores like these across the board, there's no reason not to run with AA enabled.
With even the slowest tested solution offering over 50 FPS at 2048x1536 4xAA, gamers playing HL2 variants can run with any of the high-end GPU solutions without problem. ATI does manage to claim a ~10% performance victory with the X1950 CrossFire over the 7900 GTX SLI, so if the pattern holds in future episodes ATI will be a slightly faster solution. The X1900 CrossFire configuration was also slightly faster than the SLI setup, though for all practical purposes that matchup is a tie.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
74 Comments
View All Comments
Vigile - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
My thought exactly on this one Anand...Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
You can run dual monitors with a CrossFire card as well, the CrossFire dongle that comes with the card has your 2nd DVI output on it :)Take care,
Anand
kneecap - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
What about VIVO? The Crossfire Edition does not support that.JarredWalton - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
For high-end video out, the DVI port is generally more useful anyway. It's also required if you want to hook up to a display using HDCP - I think that will work with a DVI-to-HDMI adapter, but maybe not? S-VIDEO and Composite out are basically becoming seldom used items in my experience, though the loss of component out is a bit more of a concern.JNo - Thursday, August 24, 2006 - link
So if I use DVI out and attach a DVI to HDMI adaptor before attaching to a projector or HDTV, will I get a properly encrypted signal to fully display future blu-ray/hd-dvd encrypted content?The loss of component is a bit of a concern as many HDTVs and projectors still produce amazing images with component and, in fact, I gather that some very high resolutions+refresh rates are possible on component but not DVI due to certain bandwidth limitations with DVI. But please correct me if I am wrong. I take Anandtech's point on the crossfire card offering more but with a couple of admittedly small quesiton marks, I see no reason not to get the standard card and crossfire for the second later if you decided to go that route...
JarredWalton - Thursday, August 24, 2006 - link
I suppose theoretically component could run higher resolutions than DVI, with dual-link being required for 2048x1536 and higher. Not sure what displays support such resolutions with component inputs, though. Even 1080p can run off of single-link DVI.I think the idea with CF cards over standard is that they will have a higher resale value if you want to get rid of them in the future, and they are also more versatile -- TV out capability being the one exception. There are going to be a lot of people that get systems with a standard X1950 card, so if they want to upgrade to CrossFire in the future they will need to buy the CrossFire edition. We all know that at some point ATI is no longer going to make any of the R5xx cards, so if people wait to upgrade to CrossFire they might be forced to look for used cards in a year or two.
Obviously, this whole scenario falls apart if street prices on CrossFire edition cards end up being higher than the regular cards. Given the supply/demand economics involved, that wouldn't be too surprising, but of course we won't know for another three or four weeks.
UNESC0 - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
thanks for clearing that up Anand, news to me!TigerFlash - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
I was wondering if anyone thinks it's wise to get an intel core duo 2 motherboard with crossfire support now that AMD is buying out ATI. Do you think ATI would stop supporting Intel motherboards?johnsonx - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
Of course not. AMD/ATI isn't stupid. Even if their cross-licensing agreement with Intel didn't prevent them from blocking Crossfire on Intel boards (which it almost surely does), cutting out that part of the market would be foolish.
dderidex - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
What's with the $99 -> $249 gap?Weren't we supposed to see an X1650XT, too? Based on RV570? ...or RV560? Something?