ATI's X1000 Series: Extended Performance Testing
by Derek Wilson on October 7, 2005 10:15 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Far Cry Performance
Crytek has done an excellent job keeping up with the times. As new technologies come out, it seems like they do their research into how to use them on their production game. Incorporating SM3.0 code, geometry instancing, HDR, and the like into their last patch adds value to their game, gives us a platform with which to test the current incarnation of their engine, and gives potential game engine customers a look at what they could be getting in a shipping product. We are already hearing about another patch that will further extend the impact of HDR on the game, among other things. For these tests, we crank the graphics quality settings up to very high (ultra high for water) and let the chips fall where they may. The demo that we used for this test was the built-in regulator demo.
These tests show the top end ATI and NVIDIA cards running neck and neck. The 7800 GT leads the X1800 XL in performance (which is on par with the 6800 GT in the tests that overlap). The X1600 XT is able to perform better than the 6600 GT, but we should hope to see that from a card that costs over 50% more if MSRP is anywhere near street price. Again, the X1300 shouldn't be played at over 1024x768 unless the settings are dropped.
Enabling AA gives the advantage to the X1800 XT while the X1800 XL still lags behind the 7800 GT. The X1600 XT performs much better than the 6600 GT (which we wouldn't recommend running with AA).
Once again, the X1800 XT handles the impact of AA better than any other card. The added memory bandwidth is likely the reason why we keep seeing such good handling of AA. The 7800 GT and 7800 GTX both handle AA almost as well as the X1800 XL (and finally over-take the new ATI part at 2048x1536).
Crytek has done an excellent job keeping up with the times. As new technologies come out, it seems like they do their research into how to use them on their production game. Incorporating SM3.0 code, geometry instancing, HDR, and the like into their last patch adds value to their game, gives us a platform with which to test the current incarnation of their engine, and gives potential game engine customers a look at what they could be getting in a shipping product. We are already hearing about another patch that will further extend the impact of HDR on the game, among other things. For these tests, we crank the graphics quality settings up to very high (ultra high for water) and let the chips fall where they may. The demo that we used for this test was the built-in regulator demo.
These tests show the top end ATI and NVIDIA cards running neck and neck. The 7800 GT leads the X1800 XL in performance (which is on par with the 6800 GT in the tests that overlap). The X1600 XT is able to perform better than the 6600 GT, but we should hope to see that from a card that costs over 50% more if MSRP is anywhere near street price. Again, the X1300 shouldn't be played at over 1024x768 unless the settings are dropped.
Enabling AA gives the advantage to the X1800 XT while the X1800 XL still lags behind the 7800 GT. The X1600 XT performs much better than the 6600 GT (which we wouldn't recommend running with AA).
Once again, the X1800 XT handles the impact of AA better than any other card. The added memory bandwidth is likely the reason why we keep seeing such good handling of AA. The 7800 GT and 7800 GTX both handle AA almost as well as the X1800 XL (and finally over-take the new ATI part at 2048x1536).
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waldo - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
I have been one that has been critical of the video card reviews, and am pleasantly suprised with this review! Thanks for the work Derek, and I am sure the overtime it took to punch this together...I can only imagine the hours you had to pull to put this together. That is why I love AnandTech! Great site, and responsive to the readers! Cheers!DerekWilson - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
Anything we can do to help :-)I am glad that this article was satisfactory, and I regret that we were unable to provide this ammount of coverage in our initial article.
Keep letting us know what you want and we will keep doing our best to deliver.
Thanks,
Derek Wilson
supafly - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
Maybe I missed it, but what system are these tests being done on?The tests from "ATI's Late Response to G70 - Radeon X1800, X1600 and X1300" were using:
ATI Radeon Express 200 based system
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55
1GB DDR400 2:2:2:8
120 GB Seagate 7200.7 HD
600 W OCZ PowerStreams PSU
Is this one the same? I would be interested to see the same tests run on a NF4 motherboard.
supafly - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
Ahh, I skipped over that last part.. " The test system that we employed is the one used for our initial tests of the hardware."I would still like to see it on a NF4 mobo.
photoguy99 - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
Vista will have DirectX 10, which adds geometry shaders and other bits.The ATI cards will run vista of course, but do everything DX10 hardware is capable of.
photoguy99 - Saturday, October 8, 2005 - link
Sorry, I meant the new ATI cards will *not* be DX10 compatible.The biggest difference is DX10 will introduce geometry shaders which is a whole new architectural concept.
This is a big difference that will make the X1800XT seem out of date.
The question is when will it seem out of date. Another year for Vista to be released with DX10, and then how long before a game not only has a DX10 rendering path, but has it do something interesting?
Hard to say - it could be the games with a DX10 rendering path show little difference, it could be you see a lot more geometry detail in UT2007.
Make your predications, spend your money, good luck.
Chadder007 - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
Sooo...the new ATI's are pre-DX10 compliant? If so, what about the new Nvidia parts?DerekWilson - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
This is not true -- DX10 will specific functions will not be compatible with either new ATI or NVIDIA hardware.Games written for Vista will be required to support DX9 initially and DX10 will be the advanced featureset. This will be to support hardware from the Radeon 9700 and GeFroce FX series through the Radeon X1K and 7800 series.
There is currently no hardware that is DX10 capable.
Xenoterranos - Saturday, October 8, 2005 - link
Im just hoping NVIDIA doesn't go braindead again ont he DX compliance. I'm still stuck with a non-fully compatible 5900 card. It runs HL2 very well even at high settings, but I know Im missing all the pretty DX9 stuff. I probably won't get another card untill DX10 hits, and then buy the first card that fully supports it.JarredWalton - Saturday, October 8, 2005 - link
Well, part of that is marketing. DX9 graphics are better than DX8.1, but it's not a massive difference on many games. Far Cry is almost entirely DX8.1, and other than a slight change to the water, you're missing nothing but performance.It's like the SM2.0 vs. SM3.0 debate. SM3.0 does allow for more complex coding, but mostly it just makes it so that the developers don't have to unroll loops. HDR, instancing, displacement mapping, etc. can all be done with SM2.0; it's just more difficult to accomplish and may not perform quite as fast.
Okay, I haven't ever coded SM2.0 or 3.0 (advanced graphics programming is beyond my skill level), but that's how I understand things to be. The SM3.0 brouhaha was courtesy of NVIDIA marketing, just like the full DX9 hubub was from ATI marketing. Anyway, MS and Intel have proven repeatedly that marketing is at least as important as technology.