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
Battlefield 2 Performance
Battlefield 2 has been a standard for performance benchmarks here in the past, and it's probably one of our most important tests. This game still stands out as one of those making best use of the next generation of graphics hardware available right now due to its impressive game engine.
One of the first things to note here is something that is a theme throughout all of our performance tests in this review. In all our tests we find that the X1900 XTX and X1900 XT perform very similar to each other, and in some places differ only by a couple of frames per second. This is significant considering that the X1900 XTX costs about $100 more than the X1900 XT.
Below we have two sets of graphs for three different settings: no AA, 4xAA/8xAF, and maximum quality (higher AA and AF settings in the driver). Note that our benchmark for BF2 had problems with NVIDIA's sli so we were forced to omit these numbers. We can see how with and without AA, both ATI and NVIDIA cards perform very similar to each other on each side. Generally though, since ATI tends to do a little better with AA than NVIDIA, they hold a slight edge here. With the Maximum quality settings, we see a great reduction in performance which is expected. Something to keep in mind is that in the driver options, NVIDIA can enable AA up to 8X, while ATI can only enable up to 6X, so these numbers aren't directly comparable.
Battlefield 2 has been a standard for performance benchmarks here in the past, and it's probably one of our most important tests. This game still stands out as one of those making best use of the next generation of graphics hardware available right now due to its impressive game engine.
One of the first things to note here is something that is a theme throughout all of our performance tests in this review. In all our tests we find that the X1900 XTX and X1900 XT perform very similar to each other, and in some places differ only by a couple of frames per second. This is significant considering that the X1900 XTX costs about $100 more than the X1900 XT.
Below we have two sets of graphs for three different settings: no AA, 4xAA/8xAF, and maximum quality (higher AA and AF settings in the driver). Note that our benchmark for BF2 had problems with NVIDIA's sli so we were forced to omit these numbers. We can see how with and without AA, both ATI and NVIDIA cards perform very similar to each other on each side. Generally though, since ATI tends to do a little better with AA than NVIDIA, they hold a slight edge here. With the Maximum quality settings, we see a great reduction in performance which is expected. Something to keep in mind is that in the driver options, NVIDIA can enable AA up to 8X, while ATI can only enable up to 6X, so these numbers aren't directly comparable.
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Midreian - Wednesday, January 25, 2006 - link
This test kind of seems biased to me. The cards were tried in CrossFire for the ATI cards, but when it came to the Nvidia 7800 GTX's, 512mb and 256mb, neither were tested in SLI and compared to CrossFire.Anyone have a comparison of SLI vs. CrossFire for the same tests?
DerekWilson - Wednesday, January 25, 2006 - link
For all the games but Battlefield 2 we ran both CrossFire and SLI numbersWe only ran SLI for the GTX 512 because we only looked at the highest end multigpu solution for each series (7800, 1800, 1900).
We would have included SLI in the BF2 portion, but our benchmark doesn't correctly represent gameplay for SLI. We are working on this.
Thanks,
Derek Wilson
Zebo - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Seems weird not to have Sli GT's in there. I still think thats the best deal in highend -around the $550 price point. Should clean up on both the 1900Xt and 1900XTX pretty handily for the same price or less. Is AT still in the business of recommending "bang for the buck"? or moving away from that? Because only .05% of your readers are going go up into the realm of $1000 video cards ( GTX's and XTX's in dual config)danidentity - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Are the figures in the "Load Power" chart the power consumption of just the video card, or the entire system? If those numbers are just the video card, that's flat out insane.Josh Venning - Wednesday, January 25, 2006 - link
The numbers in the Load Power chart represent the power draw for the entire system under stress testing. Even so, the 7800 GTX 512 SLI and X1900 XTX Xfire setups are ridiculously power-hungry.flexy - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
its nice to see ATI come up with something GOOD after so many disappointments, paper-launches etc.$500 is an "attractive" price (relatively spoken), looking at the card's specs...i am still having a X850XT and (sadly ???) dont really have an "urge" to get this card since i MAINLY play HL2 (full details, even AAx6) and its fast and great even on my old X850XT. Al;most makes me wish i had more game-engines which demand/justify upgrading to this card.
As said..very hapy for ATI and this card is all the way UP on my wishlist (since i am a graphicscard-ho ;).....but then i also know G71 will come and this card will be a killer-card too (from the theoretical speaks). If i had a very slow system and barely could play any games i PROBABLY would get the R580 now... ;)
Fenixgoon - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
great job by ATI for bringing out some killer cards. note that a crossfire x1900 system is CHEAPER than 7800 512's. but hey, regardless of who's on top we win :)as far as the parts being expensive - of course they will be, they're top of the line and released today.
i bought a radeon x800pro for $170 and run COD2 at 1280x1024 maxed out (no FSAA/AF) with very few framedrops (worst is scoping in on smoke from grenades). i also have stuttering issues with HDR. minus HDR, i run HL2 @ 1280x1024 6xFSAA and 16xAF. this is coming from a budget system! putting all my components together, my setup costs about 700.
Xenoterranos - Wednesday, January 25, 2006 - link
Wow, for that kind of money, you could have almos bought an Xbox 360 bundle...or half a ps3 (har har har).lamestlamer - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Did anyone else notice how the x1800xt trounced the 7800gtx in almost all tests? A look at the 7800gtx 512 release benchmarks shows the exact opposite. Perhaps the quality settings were on for the 7800gtx while the x1800xt had performance settings. Even the 7800gtx 512 which cannot possibly have a larger than 40% lead over the 7800gtx has a 100% lead in some cases.ocyl - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
It's been mentioned above but I will say it again. While it's okay to say that R580 has 48 pixel shaders, it only really has 16 pixel pipelines.