ATI's X8xx CrossFire Graphics Arrive
by Derek Wilson on September 26, 2005 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Gaming Performance
We have already taken a look into gaming performance under CrossFire when Gigabyte sent us some preproduction samples. We reran the numbers on ATI's final boards and drivers and here is what we ended up with.The numbers with no AA show CrossFire doing very well; even beating the 7800 GTX SLI in the very CPU limited Halflife 2. A bigger deal is that the X850 CrossFire actually outperformed the single 7800 GTX in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. Doom 3 generally favors NVIDIA hardware, and while the CrossFire setup can't match the 6800 Ultra SLI, it performs on par with the 7800 GTX. Battlefield 2 is a close race between the 6800 Ultra SLI and the X850 CrossFire setups.
With AA enabled, CrossFire performs similarly well. The 7800 GTX SLI beats it in Halflife 2 this time around (even though both parts are still essentially CPU limited), and CrossFire gains ground on the NVIDIA parts. The performance impact of AA on NVIDIA hardware is slightly greater than on ATI hardware. The AA quality of ATI hardware is also better. Again Battlefield 2 is a close race, with a leadership changes favoring CrossFire.
For those who wish to look back at our previous CrossFire article, you will quickly see that the CrossFire results have not changed much at all. The biggest difference here is Halflife 2 where CrossFire was already a stellar performer.
We didn't publish the results in the last article, but Battlefield 2 is now performing better having moved away from SuperTiling. The results before were not that bad, but we definitely see better numbers this time around.
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Dangher - Monday, September 26, 2005 - link
Good point. Why are comparing previous gen ATI to current gen nVidia?Pythias - Monday, September 26, 2005 - link
Good point. Why are comparing previous gen ATI to current gen nVidia?----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Previous gen? I can buy something better than an x850 xt pe from ati? Where?
Dangher - Monday, September 26, 2005 - link
Forgot to add - when it even manages to beat GTX SLI in a benchie (something to think about, eh?)Live - Monday, September 26, 2005 - link
Crossfire is compared to the 6800 Ultra SLI and more. More is better me thinks.If they hadn’t tested it against 7800GTX we would not have know that SLI got beat in HL2, now would we? I think the choice on which cards to test was great.
It's not ATs fault ATI didn’t give them any newer cards to run. You will see those benches next week.
melgross - Monday, September 26, 2005 - link
With the first comparison images between the various levels of AA, I can see the straight picture to be badly stairstepped. The 4AA seems to correct pretty much all of the problems. I can't see a real improvement in any of the others.I wonder how many will notice any of it in an actual game situation.
DerekWilson - Monday, September 26, 2005 - link
It would be easier to show the advantages if I could show motion. Higher AA not only helps the stair steps, but it also helps keep objects that are well antialised in a single frame consistent across multiple frames of motion.Jojo7 - Monday, September 26, 2005 - link
Derek, I've noticed something odd in the last few articles regarding splinter cell:chaos theory and the 6800u benchmarks. If you compare the results of 1600x1200 no aa and 1600x1200 4x aa, the performance hit for the 6800u is .1 of a frame? How is this possible? In my own experience, when I enable 4xaa on my 6800u for sc:ct, I notice no difference in image quality. Is this perhaps a driver problem?Jojo7 - Monday, September 26, 2005 - link
Err. I made a mistake. Actually the scores are identical (40.2) with and without 4xAA.Something has to be wrong here.
DerekWilson - Monday, September 26, 2005 - link
Something is wrong there ... I'm removing the 6800 ultra numbers from sc3 -- thanks for pointing out the problem.erinlegault - Monday, September 26, 2005 - link
Were you a little rush to get this article out of the door?