ATI's New Leader in Graphics Performance: The Radeon X1900 Series
by Derek Wilson & Josh Venning on January 24, 2006 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Day of Defeat Performance
Day of Defeat uses Valve's new HDR technology on the Halflife 2 engine, which makes this game a good performance benchmark. One of the most interesting things to note here is how much of a performance hit NVIDIA takes when maximum quality settings are enabled in the control panel. Specifically, the 7800 GTX 512 gets roughly half the framerate with the max settings enabled as without.
With this game, we've omitted tests without AA enabled because there tends to be a CPU limitation on higher-end cards. Notice that while ATI gets only slightly better scores with AA enabled than NVIDIA, when maximum quality is enabled in the driver, the gap widens considerably and ATI does a much better job across resolutions. ATI gets playable framerates at the highest resolutions with the maximum quality enabled, but without an sli setup, NVIDIA can't really manage similar settings (18.9 fps at 2048x1536 with max quality and 22 fps at 1920x1440 with max quality).
Day of Defeat uses Valve's new HDR technology on the Halflife 2 engine, which makes this game a good performance benchmark. One of the most interesting things to note here is how much of a performance hit NVIDIA takes when maximum quality settings are enabled in the control panel. Specifically, the 7800 GTX 512 gets roughly half the framerate with the max settings enabled as without.
With this game, we've omitted tests without AA enabled because there tends to be a CPU limitation on higher-end cards. Notice that while ATI gets only slightly better scores with AA enabled than NVIDIA, when maximum quality is enabled in the driver, the gap widens considerably and ATI does a much better job across resolutions. ATI gets playable framerates at the highest resolutions with the maximum quality enabled, but without an sli setup, NVIDIA can't really manage similar settings (18.9 fps at 2048x1536 with max quality and 22 fps at 1920x1440 with max quality).
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Live - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Thanks for the explanation! Derek I think this merits a mention in the review.NullSubroutine - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
perhaps a flash system where you can pick the card within the benchmark and it will show it on the line graph. just simply activate/deactivate feature.bldckstark - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
I have to agree that a group color for the multi-GPU setups would be helpful on the bar graphs. The outline you used to denote negative gains would work well for this. Then ATI and Nvidia bars would still have a different major color, but the multi-GPU setups could have a yellow outline. E.G. ATI = red, ATI X-fire = Red w/ yellow outline, Nvidia = blue, Nvidia SLI = blue w/ yellow outline.Rock Hydra - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
I don't know if you meant this or not, on the page mentioning the new crossfire board. There is url, I don't know if it was intended to be active or plain text, but I thought I would just bring that to your attention.DerekWilson - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
thanks, fixedemilyek - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Good article.You have two typos in your article.
In the system specs you have OZC Powerstreams instead of ...stream
When you use the words 'eek out' as a verb that means 'squeeze out', it is spelled 'eke'-- 'eke out'.
DerekWilson - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
I had no idea there was a correct spelling for eke ...thanks
beggerking - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Did anyone notice it? the breakdown graphs doesn't quite reflect the actual data..the breakdown is showing 1900xtx being much faster than 7800 512, but in the actual performance graph 1900xtx is sometimes outpaced by 7800 512..
DerekWilson - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
We didn't aggregate performance of each card under each game.for the percent improvment breakdown we only looked at 2048x1536 with 4xAA which clearly shows the x1900xtx in the lead.
our reasoning is that this is the most stressful stock test we throw at the cards -- it shows what the cards can handle under the highest stress.
beggerking - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
umm.. what about 8xAA or higher? or lower resolution? w/wo AA?if you don't aggregate performance, then won't the graphic be misleading?
isn't max quality the most stressful test ?