Fall '06 NVIDIA GPU Refresh - Part I: GeForce 7900 GS
by Derek Wilson on September 6, 2006 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Half-Life 2: Episode One Performance
Episode One of the new Half-Life 2 series makes use of recent Source engine updates to include Valve's HDR technology. While some people have done HDR that won't allow antialiasing (even on ATI cards), Valve put a high value on building an HDR implementation that everyone can use with whatever settings they want. Consistency of experience is usually not important enough to developers who care about pushing the bleeding edge of technology, so we are very happy to see Valve going down this path.
We use the built-in timedemo feature to benchmark the game. Our timedemo consists of a protracted rocket launcher fight and features much debris and pyrotechnics. The source engine timedemo feature is more like the nettimedemo of Id's Doom 3 engine, in that it plays back more than just the graphics. In fact, Valve includes some fairly intensive diagnostic tools that will reveal almost everything about every object in a scene. We haven't found a good use for this in the context of reviewing computer hardware, but our options are always open.
The highest visual quality settings possible were used including the "reflect all" setting which is normally not enabled by default, and anisotropic filtering was set at 8x. While the Source engine is notorious for giving great framerates for almost any hardware setup, we find the game isn't as enjoyable if it isn't running at at least 30fps. This is very attainable even at the highest resolution we tested on most cards, and thus our target framerate is a little higher in this game than others.
Under Half-Life 2 with Valve's HDR enabled, ATI rises to the top. The X1900 GT shows a sustainable advantage across the board. Of course, all of these cards are playable at the highest settings. The value of a few frames per second is completely up to the end user, but a narrow margin of victory is not as important with the Source engine as it in other cases.
| Half Life 2: Episode One - No AA | |||||
800x600 |
1024x768 |
1280x1024 |
1600x1200 |
1920x1440 |
|
| ATI Radeon X800 GTO | 126.9 |
81.2 |
50.4 |
35.1 |
24.3 |
| ATI Radeon X1600 XT | 102.3 |
65.8 |
41 |
29.1 |
20.4 |
| ATI Radeon X1800 GTO | 168.9 |
111.2 |
69.6 |
48.7 |
34.2 |
| ATI Radeon X1900 GT | 231.1 |
170.6 |
109.7 |
78.4 |
55.5 |
| ATI Radeon X1900 XT 256MB | 223.4 |
206.9 |
146.7 |
104.8 |
74.9 |
| ATI Radeon X1900 XT | 247.7 |
220.9 |
152.6 |
109.1 |
78.2 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT | 110.9 |
72.1 |
44.7 |
30.6 |
20.9 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GS | 130.4 |
86.3 |
53.4 |
37.2 |
23.8 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT | 164.8 |
110 |
68.1 |
46.6 |
32.3 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT | 200.1 |
140 |
92 |
64.1 |
45.2 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS | 203 |
158.3 |
104.5 |
73 |
51 |
| XFX GeForce 7900 GS 480M Extreme | 202.6 |
159.2 |
105.8 |
74.2 |
52.2 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT | 216.1 |
166.9 |
103.9 |
73.2 |
51 |
Interestingly, when we enable AA, NVIDIA becomes more competitive. This is not usually the case, and especially not with HL2. At higher resolutions, ATI's X1900 GT does retake the performance lead from the overclocked 7900 GS, but even the stock 7900 GS remains competitive up through 1600x1200.
| Half Life 2: Episode One - 4X AA | |||||
800x600 |
1024x768 |
1280x1024 |
1600x1200 |
1920x1440 |
|
| ATI Radeon X800 GTO | 77.5 |
49.7 |
30.5 |
21.3 |
14.5 |
| ATI Radeon X1600 XT | 89.2 |
57.8 |
36.4 |
24.5 |
16.3 |
| ATI Radeon X1800 GTO | 141.3 |
91.4 |
57.7 |
40.4 |
28.3 |
| ATI Radeon X1900 GT | 193.1 |
129.8 |
83.3 |
59.6 |
41.9 |
| ATI Radeon X1900 XT 256MB | 215.8 |
171.6 |
113.5 |
80.3 |
57.8 |
| ATI Radeon X1900 XT | 235.8 |
181.4 |
118.5 |
84.2 |
60.6 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT | 83.7 |
54.1 |
30 |
||
| NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GS | 121.6 |
79.9 |
48.5 |
33.6 |
20.5 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT | 146.7 |
96.4 |
58.6 |
40.4 |
24.9 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT | 177.6 |
121.5 |
75.5 |
52.8 |
34 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS | 185.7 |
131 |
81.3 |
57.1 |
36.8 |
| XFX GeForce 7900 GS 480M Extreme | 192.5 |
139 |
86.4 |
60.8 |
39.1 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT | 208.7 |
150.4 |
92.1 |
65 |
41.4 |
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
29 Comments
View All Comments
phusg - Tuesday, September 12, 2006 - link
Hi Derek,I'm a little late to the ball but still
> cheaper price tag
really grates me! I know it's pretty endemic but it's still logically incorrect. A price tag can be lower of higher, but not cheaper, unless it's the price tag being sold. It's the product itself that can be cheaper.
Cheers Derek and don't let me catch you making this one again or there'll be hell to pay ;-)
Pete
imaheadcase - Thursday, September 7, 2006 - link
Could you post a link to the bf2 demo you use, so we can compare are systems video cards to new ones?Stele - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
At first glance, it seems that ATI has markedly improved their OpenGL implementation, at least for the Doom 3 engine:However, after a moment's thought considering the vast difference in performance from before, and also the following qualifiers:
one can't help but wonder - just wonder - if there's anything here that smells like the last quake.exe driver optimisation trick ... which, curiously enough, was also pulled by ATi (iirc it was during the Radeon 8500's time?). I wonder!
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
There's no quackery as far as we know of. The problems with City of Heroes is a shader corruption bug, and a bug related to rendering on a secondary buffer, according to Cryptic(the developers of CoH). Whatever ATI did to speed up OpenGL performance here, they apparently didn't take in to account CoH.Stele - Thursday, September 7, 2006 - link
Excellent! Am deciding between the X1900GT and 7900GS (when the latter shows up in the channels), and this improvement would help strengthen the case for the X1900 a bit. :)S3anister - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
found an XFX version on this card on newegg for 189MIR.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...
emilyek - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
A worthless sku. x1900gt and x1800xt/gto2 are better and almost $50 cheaper.sharkdude - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
The Oblivion percentages are the same in this graph as in the graph on page 4 for all resolutions when in fact only the 800x600 numbers should be the same. On page 5 the numbers should be 4.1%, 10.1%, 6.4%, and 7.3% for 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1200. Note the text below the chart should also change 15% to 10%.DerekWilson - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
corrected -- but your number for 16x12 appears to be wrong as well. :-)Lifted - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
Thanks for including the 6600 and 6800 cards in the benchmarks.