Power Within Reach: NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB
by Derek Wilson on February 12, 2007 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Rainbow Six: Vegas Performance
Using the Unreal Engine 3, Rainbow Six: Vegas is a graphically stunning game. Unfortunately, the console has been disabled in Vegas, and we are unable to use any timedemo functionality that may exist in Epic's latest engine. Thus, we are forced to use FRAPS. The opening scene is the subject of our benchmark: a helicopter ride over a city. The camera is positioned to get a good mix of looking out the window and the two passengers sitting across from the player. This benchmark is very consistent with itself, but gameplay tends to be even more stressful on the hardware. Cards that run at 30 frames per second in our benchmark often drop to 20 in a fire fight. This is important to keep in mind. We are using version 1.04 of the game and all the options are turned on and up as high as possible with the exception of vsync which is disabled.
We are unable to test AA with this game, but with such low framerates running on most hardware, AA would probably hurt as much as it helped. Rainbow Six: Vegas, much like Oblivion, is a great looking game that requires a whole lot of power to run with all the settings turned up. And, also like Oblivion, Rainbow Six: Vegas performance is unaffected by the amount of memory on an 8800 GTS.
Using the Unreal Engine 3, Rainbow Six: Vegas is a graphically stunning game. Unfortunately, the console has been disabled in Vegas, and we are unable to use any timedemo functionality that may exist in Epic's latest engine. Thus, we are forced to use FRAPS. The opening scene is the subject of our benchmark: a helicopter ride over a city. The camera is positioned to get a good mix of looking out the window and the two passengers sitting across from the player. This benchmark is very consistent with itself, but gameplay tends to be even more stressful on the hardware. Cards that run at 30 frames per second in our benchmark often drop to 20 in a fire fight. This is important to keep in mind. We are using version 1.04 of the game and all the options are turned on and up as high as possible with the exception of vsync which is disabled.
We are unable to test AA with this game, but with such low framerates running on most hardware, AA would probably hurt as much as it helped. Rainbow Six: Vegas, much like Oblivion, is a great looking game that requires a whole lot of power to run with all the settings turned up. And, also like Oblivion, Rainbow Six: Vegas performance is unaffected by the amount of memory on an 8800 GTS.
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A5 - Monday, February 12, 2007 - link
People with a 19" monitor aren't going to drop $300+ on a video card. You can get a X1950 Pro for $175 that can handle 1280x1024 in pretty much every game out today.jsmithy2007 - Monday, February 12, 2007 - link
Are you high? I know plenty of people with 19 and 21" CRTs that use latest gen GPUs. These people are typically called "gamers" or "enthusiasts," perhaps you've heard of these terms. Even at moderate resolutions (1280x1024, 1600x1200), to run a game like Oblivion with all the eye candy turned on really does require a higher end GPU. Hell, I need 2 7800GTXs in SLI to just barely play with max settings at 1280x1024 while running 2xAA. Granted my GPUs are getting a little long in the tooth, but the point is still the same.Omega215D - Monday, February 12, 2007 - link
Yes but the X1950 Pro doesn't do DirectX 10 and hopefully with the new unified shader architecture the 8800GTS won't be too obsolete when majority of the games shipping will be DX10.I run a widescreen 19" monitor at 1440 x 900, for some reason my card can run games when I was at the 1280 x 1024 res but now games have become a little choppy in this resolution even though the pixel count is less... any idea why?
DerekWilson - Monday, February 12, 2007 - link
Non standard resolutions can sometimes have an impact on performance depeding on the hardware, game, and driver combination.As far as DX10 goes, gamers who run 12x10 are best off waiting to upgrade to new hardware.
There will be parts that will perform very well at 12x10 while costing much less than $300 and providing DX10 support from both AMD and NVIDIA at some point in the future. At this very moment, DX10 doesn't matter that much, and dropping all that money on a card that won't provide any real benefit without a larger monitor or some games that really take advantage of the advanced features just isn't something we can recommend.
damsaddm - Tuesday, February 27, 2018 - link
Where is the download link? I found the link here: https://secondgeek.com/drivers/nvidia-geforce-8800...It is working...