Budget Performance Tests
For these tests, we ran only 800x600 and 1024x768. These are the only two resolutions that make any sense to run with Battlefield 2. 640x480 is all but unplayable as the text is mangled and layout gets broken. At 800x600, both cards do well, but the NVIDIA 6200 TurboCache maintains a performance lead here both with and without AA (though, the ATI card does close the gap when AA/AF are cranked up).
When we move up to 1024x768, the TurboCache card shows a little more capability than the HyperMemory part. Of course, both low end cards have very choppy performance at parts here. Tests with AA on at this resolution would have been a waste of time, and we strongly recommend playing the game at 800x600 without AA and Low Texture Filtering settings. In fact, turning down some of the options may help, but the player is at a disadvantage with less than maximal settings on view distance and shadows. Also, at this low resolution, we can see that an upgrade would offer playable frame rates at more than twice the performance. On high end parts, we are very CPU limited, and the SLI configuration is hampered because of added driver overhead.
Serious gamers will not want to play with these cards, but the casual gaming experience can be quite enjoyable. For a budget system, the ability to play current generation games without sacrificing shader effects will become more and more important as time goes on. As games rely more heavily on shading rather than simple textures and geometry to paint the experience, budget users will be glad that both ATI and NVIDIA offer options like these.
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saiku - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
The choice of cards to benchmark always baffles me.Where are the mainstream cards such as 9800 Pro? What percentage of Anandtech's audience uses 7800 GTX or an SLI setup? Why not focus on the "mainstream" cards such as the 9800s, the 6800GT and non spend tons of stats on $1000 video card setups.
I love reading anandtech stuff but their choice of cards for benchmarks drives me nuts.
JustAnAverageGuy - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
Would have liked to see the 9800 Pro and 800XL included.DerekWilson - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
Sorry, I was mixing up my game engines there -- you are correct and the article has been fixed to reflect the use of the proper engine.Derek Wilson
Therms - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
The Battlefield 1942 engine had nothing to do with the Unreal Engine."When you're looking at screenshots and movies from Battlefield 1942 you cant stop noticing that it is damn beautiful; could you tell us something more about the technique behind the game? We heard that you developed your own engine, could you please tell us a little bit more about it?
The engine is named Refractor2 and is completely home made, just as it's predecessor, Refractor. The reason why we made our own engine, and didn't use any of the well known engines as say the Quake3 engine or the Unreal Tournament engine, is because of the specific demands that Battlefield 1942 has. "
http://www.gamingeye.com/english/artiklar/artikel....
CrystalBay - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
Nice article Derek,Will AT be making the AT BF2 benchmark downloadable for members ? That would be nice , then members could bench thier cards and share the results. Myself I can figure out how well my GT scales compared to Ultras.
dev0lution - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
It doesn't make much sense to include an X700 Pro over an X800XL, as I'm sure the latter is one of the more popular ATI cards.coomar - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
x700 pro is pretty much the equivalent of a 9800pro, i'm a little surprised as to a lack of the x800xl or 6800gtShadowVlican - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
a 2nd edition of this article would be appreciated (to include CPU scaling & older gfx cards)Yelapaboy - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
One thing I have noticed with my 3.2 @ 3.6 P4 with X800 XT PE main rig is that although I notice a pretty nice difference at very high res with older games and sims I don't notice that much with newer shooters that use shaders such as HL2, Doom 3, and Far Cry. For example I was almost as happy playing Far Cry at 1024x768 with 2X temporal FSAA on my old 9700Pro as 1600x1200 4X with my X800 XT PE, I can't tell much difference in HL2, Butcher Bay or Doom 3 when I go above 1280x960 on my 22" Viewsonic P225 and pretty much run them at that res. I figure my year and a half old main rig with it's year old video card easily has another year left of keeping me wildly happy although I am chomping at the bit for a dual core AMD CPU and the 7800 is certainly awesome. I feel that of the games I play only IL2 and FS2004 would give me a definitely better gaming experience with more GPU and CPU but as it is they run quite well. At any rate great article but I would have liked to see certain other cards tested.Jep4444 - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
the demo doesn't seem to want to install on my computer so i can't see how it'll run on my rig