Fall '06 NVIDIA GPU Refresh - Part I: GeForce 7900 GS
by Derek Wilson on September 6, 2006 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Performance
We make use of the Lighthouse demo for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. We have been using this benchmark for quite some time and facilitate automation with the scripts published at Beyond 3D. This benchmark is fairly close to in game performance for our system, but midrange users may see a little lower real world performance when tested with a lower speed processor.
Our settings all used the highest quality level possible including the extra SM3.0 features. As the advanced shaders and antialiasing are mutually exclusive under SC:CT, we left AA disabled and focused on the former. We set anisotropic filtering to 8x for all cards.
For this 3rd person stealth game, ultra high frame rates are not necessary. We have a good playing experience at 25 fps or higher. There may be the framerate junkie out there who likes it a little higher, but our recommendation is based on consistency of experience and ability to play the game without a degraded experience.
While slightly outperformed by the X1900 GT, the 7900 GS is still a very good value for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. Playable frame rates can drop much lower than 30 fps, so spending less to get the stock 7900 GT might be a viable option in this case. The performance lead the X1900 GT holds over the 7900 GS in this case just isn't enough to make it a worth while alternative in SC:CT.
| Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory - No AA | |||||
800x600 |
1024x768 |
1280x1024 |
1600x1200 |
1920x1440 |
|
| ATI Radeon X800 GTO | 75.3 |
56.9 |
41.2 |
32.3 |
23 |
| ATI Radeon X1600 XT | 47.6 |
36.2 |
25.6 |
18.8 |
13.8 |
| ATI Radeon X1800 GTO | 79.6 |
59.1 |
40.9 |
28.7 |
21.9 |
| ATI Radeon X1900 GT | 101.9 |
78.8 |
57.6 |
43.7 |
31.9 |
| ATI Radeon X1900 XT 256MB | 131.2 |
103.2 |
76.7 |
58.8 |
43.1 |
| ATI Radeon X1900 XT | 137.9 |
108.5 |
79.8 |
61 |
45.6 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT | 44.6 |
32.1 |
22 |
16 |
10.6 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GS | 65.8 |
47.5 |
32.4 |
23.7 |
15.9 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT | 75.4 |
54.6 |
38.2 |
28.2 |
20.7 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT | 92.4 |
67.9 |
47 |
35 |
25.8 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS | 103.6 |
76.1 |
52.7 |
39.2 |
29 |
| XFX GeForce 7900 GS 480M Extreme | 110.1 |
81.1 |
56.1 |
41.8 |
30.9 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT | 112.5 |
83.5 |
58.1 |
43.5 |
32.1 |
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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.