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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jkostans - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
Yeah the 9800 pro runs fine at 1024x768 with graphics high on my barton 3000+ (2.2ghz). Oh yeah and a gig of pc2700 ram. I would compare the framerate to CS:S but a tad slower in some areas. Oh and for people wanting to find out how their computer performs, there is a demo available. Yeah it's 500mb but it's good.Xenoterranos - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
Where's the Voodo 3 2000/K62 test setup? Come on guys, cater to the poor b@stards out here... :pWileCoyote - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
For you 9800 Pro owners this game runs pretty well on a 3ghz p4 with 2gb of ram.I run BF2 at 1024x768, medium, 4xAA and it runs very smooth. I'm sure you could even bump up some of the medium settings to high.
Aikouka - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
#16:I mean bias as in a statistical bias, not a personal preference.
Jep4444 - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
how bout we seem some tests from either an X600Pro/XT or a 9600Pro/XT, these cards are extremely common and personally i'd like to know how my card fairs in BF2, i don't want to have to wait until the X550 comes out(basically a 9600Pro with 500mhz RAM instead of 600mhz) to find out how my card should performyacoub - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
Oh I see now. FX-55 system. Heh.yacoub - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
Sweet so if I get an X800XL card for around $300 (the most anyone should have to pay for a GPU to play the latest games smoothly), I can just about handle 1280x1024 with 4xAA/High quality at around 50fps. That's not toooooooo bad.Oh wait, I wonder what the rest of the test system's specs are (I didn't see them on any of the pages). If it's like an FX-57 or something then that's not exactly promising for the majority of us running 3000+-3700+ A64 systems who will clearly experience a bit lower performance. =/
Avalon - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
#18,An X700 does not have twice the pipes of a 9800 pro, it has the same exact ammount. It also is not clocked much higher. The x700pro is clocked at 425/860 compared to a 9800pro at 380/680. As you can see, core speeds are fairly close, and memory speeds...well, the 9800pro is 256bit while the x700pro is 128bit, so despite the clockspeed advantage, the x700 should actually have less memory bandwidth in the end. This puts the cards roughly equal.
OrSin - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
the x700pro is clocked a little higher but has the same number of pipes and only 128 bus where the 9800pro has 256 bus. In truth the 9800pro is faster then the x700 and might be about the same as the 700pro or just little faster.coldpower27 - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
Questar, X700 is the RV410 chip which is 8X1/6 vs the the 9800 Pro R350 chip with 8X1/4. Though the X700 Pro has the advanatge of being clcoked a little higher.The X700 Pro should be close to the 6600 GT. And certainly does not have twice the pixel pipes or vertex pipes of 9800 Pro.