ATI Radeon X1950 Pro: CrossFire Done Right
by Derek Wilson on October 17, 2006 6:22 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.
Showing about a 10% performance advantage over the 7900 GS, the X1950 Pro delivers a good level of performance under Half-Life 2: Episode One without AA enabled. Combine that with the fact that CrossFire delivers about an 80% performance improvement to SLI's 66%, and we have a clear winner in the mulit-GPU department here.
Enabling 4xAA under HL2:EP1 closes the gap between ATI and NVIDIA at the $200
mark, but still leaves ATI in the lead. The same is true in the multi-GPU
arena.
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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. ??