ATI's New Leader in Graphics Performance: The Radeon X1900 Series
by Derek Wilson & Josh Venning on January 24, 2006 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Performance Breakdown
Here we're going to take a quick look at overall performance of the X1900 XTX compared to the X1800 XT and to the 7800 GTX 512. This will give us a good idea at the outset of what we are going to see in terms of performance from the new part from ATI. Obviously having individual numbers for multiple resolutions over multiple settings is more conducive to proper analysis of the performance characteristics of the hardware, but for those who just want the bottom line here it is. This is a look at 2048x1536 with 4xAA performance in order to see a snapshot of performance under high stress.
The resounding victory of the X1900 XTX over the 7800 GTX 512 in almost every performance test clearly shows how powerful a part we are playing with. Clearly NVIDIA has been dethroned and will have a difficult time regaining its performance lead. But the more these two companies can leap-frog eachother, the happier we get.
The only real loss the X1900 suffers to the 7800 GTX 512 is in Black and White 2. We've complained about the poor performance of BW2 under ATI hardware for months now, and apparently ATI have located a bug in the application causing the performance issue. They have a patch, which we are currently evaluating, that improves performance. ATI are saying that Lionhead will be including this fix in an upcoming game patch, and we are excited to see something finally being done about this issue.
Of course, with the BW2 test in question, that puts the ATI Radeon X1900 XTX firmly and without question in place as the worlds fastest consumer level graphics product.
Here we're going to take a quick look at overall performance of the X1900 XTX compared to the X1800 XT and to the 7800 GTX 512. This will give us a good idea at the outset of what we are going to see in terms of performance from the new part from ATI. Obviously having individual numbers for multiple resolutions over multiple settings is more conducive to proper analysis of the performance characteristics of the hardware, but for those who just want the bottom line here it is. This is a look at 2048x1536 with 4xAA performance in order to see a snapshot of performance under high stress.
Hold your mouse over the links below to see the quick performance breakdown of the Radeon X1900 XTX at that resolution:
The resounding victory of the X1900 XTX over the 7800 GTX 512 in almost every performance test clearly shows how powerful a part we are playing with. Clearly NVIDIA has been dethroned and will have a difficult time regaining its performance lead. But the more these two companies can leap-frog eachother, the happier we get.
The only real loss the X1900 suffers to the 7800 GTX 512 is in Black and White 2. We've complained about the poor performance of BW2 under ATI hardware for months now, and apparently ATI have located a bug in the application causing the performance issue. They have a patch, which we are currently evaluating, that improves performance. ATI are saying that Lionhead will be including this fix in an upcoming game patch, and we are excited to see something finally being done about this issue.
Of course, with the BW2 test in question, that puts the ATI Radeon X1900 XTX firmly and without question in place as the worlds fastest consumer level graphics product.
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Live - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Thanks for the explanation! Derek I think this merits a mention in the review.NullSubroutine - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
perhaps a flash system where you can pick the card within the benchmark and it will show it on the line graph. just simply activate/deactivate feature.bldckstark - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
I have to agree that a group color for the multi-GPU setups would be helpful on the bar graphs. The outline you used to denote negative gains would work well for this. Then ATI and Nvidia bars would still have a different major color, but the multi-GPU setups could have a yellow outline. E.G. ATI = red, ATI X-fire = Red w/ yellow outline, Nvidia = blue, Nvidia SLI = blue w/ yellow outline.Rock Hydra - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
I don't know if you meant this or not, on the page mentioning the new crossfire board. There is url, I don't know if it was intended to be active or plain text, but I thought I would just bring that to your attention.DerekWilson - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
thanks, fixedemilyek - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Good article.You have two typos in your article.
In the system specs you have OZC Powerstreams instead of ...stream
When you use the words 'eek out' as a verb that means 'squeeze out', it is spelled 'eke'-- 'eke out'.
DerekWilson - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
I had no idea there was a correct spelling for eke ...thanks
beggerking - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Did anyone notice it? the breakdown graphs doesn't quite reflect the actual data..the breakdown is showing 1900xtx being much faster than 7800 512, but in the actual performance graph 1900xtx is sometimes outpaced by 7800 512..
DerekWilson - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
We didn't aggregate performance of each card under each game.for the percent improvment breakdown we only looked at 2048x1536 with 4xAA which clearly shows the x1900xtx in the lead.
our reasoning is that this is the most stressful stock test we throw at the cards -- it shows what the cards can handle under the highest stress.
beggerking - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
umm.. what about 8xAA or higher? or lower resolution? w/wo AA?if you don't aggregate performance, then won't the graphic be misleading?
isn't max quality the most stressful test ?