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
Black and White 2 Performance
Black and White 2 is a god sim with a very sophisticated graphics and physics engine. One thing very interesting about this game is the advanced in-game Anti-Aliasing option. While, only offering "low", "medium" and "high" AA settings, the game's AA looks surprisingly good, as we will show under the image quality section.
Here with Black and White 2, NVIDIA does quite a bit better than ATI. It would be an understatement to say that this game favors NVIDIA over ATI due to the before-mentioned problem ATI has with this game. Not only do the 1900s perform much lower than the GTX (without AA), but the performance actually becomes worse when Crossfire is enabled. Keep in mind though that ATI has promised a patch, and this issue will hopefully be resolved soon.
Also, Black and White 2 just happens to be possibly the most graphically intensive of our games in this review, so NVIDIA's parts struggle at high resolutions and with AA significantly. This game appears to put even the mighty 7800 GTX 512 sli setup to task, but we still see a playable framerate at the highest resolution with AA enabled. Note that we did not include maximum quality tests here because the in-game AA did a far greater job at image quality with not nearly the same drop in performance.
Black and White 2 is a god sim with a very sophisticated graphics and physics engine. One thing very interesting about this game is the advanced in-game Anti-Aliasing option. While, only offering "low", "medium" and "high" AA settings, the game's AA looks surprisingly good, as we will show under the image quality section.
Here with Black and White 2, NVIDIA does quite a bit better than ATI. It would be an understatement to say that this game favors NVIDIA over ATI due to the before-mentioned problem ATI has with this game. Not only do the 1900s perform much lower than the GTX (without AA), but the performance actually becomes worse when Crossfire is enabled. Keep in mind though that ATI has promised a patch, and this issue will hopefully be resolved soon.
Also, Black and White 2 just happens to be possibly the most graphically intensive of our games in this review, so NVIDIA's parts struggle at high resolutions and with AA significantly. This game appears to put even the mighty 7800 GTX 512 sli setup to task, but we still see a playable framerate at the highest resolution with AA enabled. Note that we did not include maximum quality tests here because the in-game AA did a far greater job at image quality with not nearly the same drop in performance.
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Josh Venning - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
:-)GTMan - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
How long until we see lower end parts.My guesses:
X1900XL replaces X1800XL
X1700 replaces X1600
Sledgehamer70 - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Has anyone else noticed that the X1900XTX only out performs over all in the 1920 x 1440 settings? It is a 50/ 50 split for the most part in 1280 x 960 and 1600 x 1200. So once again everyone and there mom wont be seeing the same numbers as these guys! So misleading!Yeah I know its looking ahead to the future, but looking on themarket only 5%-2% of gamers run games at these specs... I will give ATI credit that they made a good card "Finally" but lets compare apples to apples, they should take the combined scores and average them out and see what the overall outcome is... im sure ATI will still ead but by not as much as it portray's!
DerekWilson - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
again, if you want a card to run at low resolutions, the 6800 GS or x800 gto are probably much better and more cost effective ways to go.why does everyone want to swat a fly with a baseball bat?
Wellsoul2 - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Hmm..1280x1024 would seem to be a useful resolution since many use19 in and 17 in LCD's.
Seriously, No way can I afford this card but I would like to see it
compared to the 1800XL card at this resolution.
(I'm hoping the 1800XL price drops so I can pick up an ATI shader3
card for less than $250 which is my price point)
Yay for ATI..but ATI still has no mid priced card with shader3.0 :-(
beggerking - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
well, the definition of "resolution most people run" change constantly. I understand you are using 4x AA, but 8xAA is right around the corner, as well as higher resolution.I don't see this kind of performance advantage for x1900xtx on any other setting than the one you used for performance advantage, therefore that graphic is perhaps, a personal/biased view that will not stand against time.
vladik007 - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Are they really out of their mind ? I've never bought console before but these PC components prices are gonna drive me out of the market.And i thought my 6800GT for $400 was absurd price to pay.... wow
nullpointerus - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
I have an idea. Maybe you could buy something less expensive. For example, a $200 card should be able to play modern games albeit with lower image quality than the more expensive cards. But don't tell anyone! I want to keep this a secret.poohbear - Wednesday, January 25, 2006 - link
rofl nullpointerus u crack me up. So true man, LETS keep it a secret.;)poohbear - Wednesday, January 25, 2006 - link
rofl nullpointerus u crack me up. So true man, LETS keep it a secret.;)