Introducing the Radeon X1650 XT: A New Mainstream GPU from ATI

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Performance

Our last performance test we'll be looking at is with Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. This benchmark has been around for a while, and we've used it time and again to not only test frames per second, but also power consumption and heat levels for many GPUs. The game is getting to be a little old for our purposes; we prefer using more current and/or more widely-played games for our performance tests, but it is still useful to us because of its SM3.0 features. With the imminent release of the next Splinter Cell game (Splinter Cell: Double Agent), we're interested in seeing how the newest installment of this game looks graphically, and how much it will tax our graphics cards in tests to come.

For this test we set all of the quality settings to the highest level possible and turned on all the SM3.0 features. We also set anisotropic filtering to 8x for all cards.



Our graphs show the X1650 XT and the 7600 GT being very close in performance, in most resolutions having less than 1 FPS difference. In this test, the 7600 GT still does a tiny bit better than the X1650 XT, but the results are too close to matter for the most part. Because the gameplay of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory relies on stealth, it doesn't require a very high frame rate to be enjoyable. This game would be playable at 1920x1440 on almost all these cards, with the exception of the X1600 XT and 6600 GT.