ATI Radeon X1950 Pro: CrossFire Done Right
by Derek Wilson on October 17, 2006 6:22 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.
Once again, ATI has informed us that we should expect to see higher X1950 Pro CrossFire numbers in a future driver release. With other CrossFire configurations as a guide, we can easily expect X1950 Pro to nearly double its single card performance and put it on par with the 7950 GX2 and 7900 GT SLI configurations. As for single card performance, we see the trend of X1950 Pro domination continuing. Performance greater than that of the 7900 GS and GT for $200 is hard to argue with.
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Spoelie - Tuesday, October 17, 2006 - link
It might be a good idea to use omega's drivers, they do not include catalyst control center but instead use ati tray tools OR the old control panel slightly updated. The only downside to this is that omega's are sometimes one or two releases behind the official ones.if you're not comfortable with omega's drivers (even though they're rock solid :)) you can always download just the driver from ati and install ati tray tools seperatly. it includes every option you need to change driver settings etc but is a sleek minimalist fast 1mb tool :)
JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 17, 2006 - link
Unfortunately, CCC is required to enable CrossFire. I don't know if Omega gets around this requirement somehow, but the standard ATI control panel drivers do not have the CrossFire checkbox anywhere.Aikouka - Tuesday, October 17, 2006 - link
The awkward drivers is actually the main reason I steer clear of ATi still. Also, I get a bit annoyed at the company as they only seem to care about their graphics sector and ignore all of their other products. My ATi TV Wonder Pro Remote Control Edition had so many problems over the years that it was barely worth owning. The Remote Control software just crashes randomly still.Although, I have yet to try the newest version of the software, because I removed the card from my system and it won't let you install the main software without it.
So... with my experience, it leaves me a bit wary.
But I do also have to admit how much I also don't like the newer nVidia control panel, but at least I can go back to the original one with one mouse click :).
DerekWilson - Tuesday, October 17, 2006 - link
Right on.Zaitsev - Tuesday, October 17, 2006 - link
Typo on page 2, third paragraph."It is hard enough for us to sort things out when parts hit the selves at different speeds..."
RamarC - Tuesday, October 17, 2006 - link
suggestion: replace Q4 and B&W2 with Prey and Company of HeroesDerekWilson - Tuesday, October 17, 2006 - link
We are planning on doing exactly that starting in early November.spe1491 - Tuesday, October 17, 2006 - link
Possible typo?-
Basilisk - Tuesday, October 17, 2006 - link
Further clue: try "heartily"; "hardily" means "ruggedly", etc..Spoelie - Tuesday, October 17, 2006 - link
After browsing through some other reviews, all which seem to use the Catalyst 6.9 drivers, it occured to me that they all have significantly lower performance for the ATi camp then what anandtech is reporting.Most reviews place 7900gs performance well above that of the x1950pro in quake 4. Can anyone explain to me why that is, and the supposed opengl/doom3 optimisations are only being seen by AT and not by sites such as bit-tech, hardocp, the tech report, firing squad, etc. ??