ATI's X1000 Series: Extended Performance Testing
by Derek Wilson on October 7, 2005 10:15 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Day of Defeat: Source Performance
Rather than test Half-Life 2 once again, we decided to use a game that pushed the engine further. The reworked Day of Defeat: Source takes 4 levels from the original game and adds not only the same brush up given to Counter Strike: Source, but HDR capabilities as well. The new Source engine supports games with and without HDR. The ability to use HDR is dependent on whether or not the art assets needed to do the job are available.
In order to push this test to the max, the highest settings possible were tested. This includes enabling the reflect all and full HDR options. Our first test was run with no antialiasing and trilinear filtering, and our second set of numbers was generated after 4x antialiasing and 8x anisotropic filtering were enabled.
From the looks of our graph, we hit a pretty hard CPU barrier near 80 frames per second. The 7800 GTX sticks the closest to this limit for the longest, but still can't help but fall off when pushing two to three megapixel resolutions. The 7800 GT manages to out-perform the X1800 XT, but more interestingly, the X850 XT and X1800 XL put up nearly identical numbers in this test. The X1300 Pro and the X1600 XT parallel each other as well, with the X1600 XT giving almost the same numbers as the X1300 Pro one resolution higher. The 6600 GT (and thus the 6800 GT as well) out-performs the X1600 XT pretty well.
Antialiasing changes the performance trends a bit, but at lower resolutions, we still see our higher end parts reaching up towards that 80 fps CPU limit. The biggest difference that we see here is that the X1000 series are able to gain the lead in some cases as resolution increases with AA enabled. The X1800 XT takes the lead from the 7800 GTX at 1920x1200 and at 2048x1536. The 7800 GT manages to hold its lead over the X1800 XL, but neither is playable at the highest resolution with 4xAA/8xAF enabled. The 6600 GT and X1600 XT manage to stop being playable at anything over 1024x768 with AA enabled. On those parts, gamers are better off just increasing the resolution to 1280x960 with no AA.
The 7800 series parts try to pretend that they scale as well as the X1800 series at 1600x1200 and below when enabling AA. The X850 XT scales worse than the rest of the high end, but this time, the X1600 XT is able to show that it handles the move to AA better than either of the X8xx parts test and better than the 6600 GT as well. The 6800 GT takes the hit from antialiasing better than the X1600 XT though.
Doom 3 showed NVIDIA hardware leading at every step of the way in our previous tests. Does anything change when looking at numbers with and without AA enabled?
Rather than test Half-Life 2 once again, we decided to use a game that pushed the engine further. The reworked Day of Defeat: Source takes 4 levels from the original game and adds not only the same brush up given to Counter Strike: Source, but HDR capabilities as well. The new Source engine supports games with and without HDR. The ability to use HDR is dependent on whether or not the art assets needed to do the job are available.
In order to push this test to the max, the highest settings possible were tested. This includes enabling the reflect all and full HDR options. Our first test was run with no antialiasing and trilinear filtering, and our second set of numbers was generated after 4x antialiasing and 8x anisotropic filtering were enabled.
From the looks of our graph, we hit a pretty hard CPU barrier near 80 frames per second. The 7800 GTX sticks the closest to this limit for the longest, but still can't help but fall off when pushing two to three megapixel resolutions. The 7800 GT manages to out-perform the X1800 XT, but more interestingly, the X850 XT and X1800 XL put up nearly identical numbers in this test. The X1300 Pro and the X1600 XT parallel each other as well, with the X1600 XT giving almost the same numbers as the X1300 Pro one resolution higher. The 6600 GT (and thus the 6800 GT as well) out-performs the X1600 XT pretty well.
Antialiasing changes the performance trends a bit, but at lower resolutions, we still see our higher end parts reaching up towards that 80 fps CPU limit. The biggest difference that we see here is that the X1000 series are able to gain the lead in some cases as resolution increases with AA enabled. The X1800 XT takes the lead from the 7800 GTX at 1920x1200 and at 2048x1536. The 7800 GT manages to hold its lead over the X1800 XL, but neither is playable at the highest resolution with 4xAA/8xAF enabled. The 6600 GT and X1600 XT manage to stop being playable at anything over 1024x768 with AA enabled. On those parts, gamers are better off just increasing the resolution to 1280x960 with no AA.
The 7800 series parts try to pretend that they scale as well as the X1800 series at 1600x1200 and below when enabling AA. The X850 XT scales worse than the rest of the high end, but this time, the X1600 XT is able to show that it handles the move to AA better than either of the X8xx parts test and better than the 6600 GT as well. The 6800 GT takes the hit from antialiasing better than the X1600 XT though.
Doom 3 showed NVIDIA hardware leading at every step of the way in our previous tests. Does anything change when looking at numbers with and without AA enabled?
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bob661 - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
If AT is going to cover that in a later article, then the observations ARE NOT short sighted. Since we're picking nits, if the other sites are giving you ALL the information you require, why do you insist on bagging on AT? Just go to get your info, make your decision, and STFU.tfranzese - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
Because, unlike you, I like to compare the results between all my favorite sites. Maybe you're not mature enough to understand the reasons for that, so I'll fill you in: Humans make mistakes, so trusting one persons judgement or methodology is not an intelligent decision in the real world.Also, it makes no mention in the article that near-term games are to be tested in a future update of this sort. Yes, I expect they'll be around once retail boards are reviewed, but if they plan on continuing tests on IQ, shader abilities, etc then what sense does it make to pass judgement until those tests are complete?
bob661 - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
Did you not read tfranzese's post that you replied to? Scroll up about 1/2 inch. That quote is from the article. Your quote, , says you like to sample different websites to get whole picture yet you bag on one site (AT) that doesn't give you enough info. If you go to different sites to get the whole picture, why bag on any of them? You're still getting all of the info you need.bob661 - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
LOL...oops..you made that quote yourself. I can't believe you quoted but yet you still imply that AT isn't going to do any furthur testing in the areas you would like to see tested. I quit..lol!tfranzese - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
The further testing I am referring to are with near-term titles, not SM3.0 analysis. I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying or I'm not being clear enough.I also do believe it's short-sighted to judge an architecture before all the tests are complete. Right now I know IQ and SM3.0 examinations are coming up, but it looks like they're done with the game benchmarks until the suite is updated and retail boards are available.
Anyway...
Sure, I can get the majority of my data from a collection of sites, but if I voice my criticism I could hope that someday I may only have to visit three sites instead of ten to confirm and compare results and analysis. Not that I didn't enjoy reading all those articles during my downtime at work.
JarredWalton - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
Naw, we're not done. And while it's true that http://labs.anandtech.com/search.php?q=x1800&p...">you can purchase an X1800XL, we're still missing the X1800 XT. $440 or so for the XL http://labs.anandtech.com/search.php?q=7800%20gtx&...">isn't much cheaper than a 7800 GTX, and while the X1800 XT might be faster overall, the 7800 GTX beats the XL in nearly every test.
Also, one big question mark that still remains is SLI vs. Crossfire performance. SLI is here now and working for the 7800 cards. X1800 XT is still a month out, and Crossfire X1800 XT... who knows? Three months, maybe more? After the delays of the X800 Crossfire parts, I'm not even ready to venture a guess on X1800 CF. :|
DerekWilson - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
We will test the near term games along with SM3.0 as many people have asked us for this. Let us know if you need anything else.DigitalFreak - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
What about running EQ2 with AA turned on via the setting in EQ2.ini? I would assume that the results would be similar to the other tests though.Benching the Call of Duty 2 demo would be cool as well. A couple of sites have seen a performance increase when using a 512MB card vs a 256MB one. May actually be the first game where 512MB is worth having.
tfranzese - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
Donka!phaxmohdem - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
I know all my "gaming" monitors at home run at 1280x1024 What gives with the benchmarks of this uncommon? resolution? Thats 81,920 extra pixels unaccounted for in the graphs for many of us running 17 and 19 inch LCD's.