Antialiasing Performance
With midrange cards, dropping resolution a little and enabling antialiasing is usually an option. We tend to prefer a higher resolution and more settings, especially in an age where games like Oblivion and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory require a choice between HDR and antialiasing in some cases. Hopefully we'll see fewer discrepancies in the future. For now, we've selected three of the games we tested to evaluate AA performance for our midrange group.
Battlefield 2
We see the ~140fps CPU limitation of the Core 2 Extreme X6800 having less of an impact on the X1900 XT, but the rest of the pack seems to scale similarly either with or without AA enabled. Our 6600 GT was unable to render 1920x1440 with 4xAA due to its 128MB memory size, but it isn't playable with AA at over 1024x768 anyway. While the high end of our test shows the top three cards playable at 1920x1440 with 4xAA, our 7600 GT can't be pushed past 1600x1200. The X1600 XT is stuck somewhere between 1024x768 and 1280x1024 depending on how smooth the gamer wants BF2 to run.
As with our non-AA test, the X1900 XT leads at the ~$300 price point, while the X1900 GT leads the 7900 GT in value without sacrificing performance. At the same time, the bump up from the 7600 GT in cost for an X1900 GT looks well worth it if greater than 1600x1200 resolutions are desired for Battlefield 2.
Half-Life 2: Episode One
This time the 6600 GT runs out of gas at 1280x1024 with 4xAA enabled. At the same time, every card other than the (stock) X800 GTO and X1600 XT are playable at 1600x1200 with 4xAA. This is a fairly good alternative to 1920x1440 without AA in Half-Life 2: Episode One. Having a little AA enabled does bring a little more life to the game. Since most of these midrange cards we tested can pull it off, and a good many people don't run higher than 1600x1200 anyway, this is a great option.
Quake 4
Due to the low contrast edges in most of the art and design in Quake 4, antialiasing is usually a little overkill. We'd prefer to run at a higher resolution or with uncompressed normal maps (ultra quality) rather than with AA enabled. But as Id favors OpenGL, we decided it would be beneficial to talk about antialiasing under Quake 4. Like our other tests, the 6600 GT and it's 128MB of RAM just can't handle 4xAA at 1920x1440. We might care about this if the game was at all playable at over 800x600 with 4xAA. The X1900 GT maintains its performance lead over the 7900 GT with AA enabled, but only the X1900 XT can hang on to playability at 1920x1440 with 4xAA. We do see good performance from the X1900 GT and 7900 GT at 1600x1200 though. X1600 XT users will need to stop at 1024x768 if they want to enable 4xAA with high quality settings under Quake 4.
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Gigahertz19 - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
I can't stand people who always have to correct every damn thing they read, who cares if the authors of these articles make little mistakes? As long as these articles are readable and understandable who gives a shit. I don't think anybody has the right to complain for something that is free for us to read...now if we were paying to read this material it would be a different story.I can understand correcting big mistakes like correcting the author when he uses the incorrect name for something or is wrong about a fact then that should be corrected but little grammatical errors and sentence structure should be left alone unless it's completely butchered. If you're so interested in these small mistakes go teach high school English.
And yes I know some ass on here will find an error in my above comments and correct it, go for it :).
yacoub - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
Actually, the authors generally appreciate it and fix it, at least in my experience. It makes for a more professional site to have solid grammar in articles. As for "who gives a s#!t", generally adults do.Netopia - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
And to support his position, take a look at the sentence now... they fixed it!Joe
JarredWalton - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
Yup.Derek was working on this late at night and so I went and made my typical corrections after the fact. There were plenty of other minor typos, and we do our best to correct them whether we spot them or someone else does. We certainly don't mind people pointing them out, as long as it's not the "OMFG you misspelled two words on the first page so I stopped reading - you guys are teh lamez0rz!?1!" type of comment. ;)
CKDragon - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
I have my 7900GT voltmodded & overclocked to 640/820. I know you didn't show voltmod overclocked benchmarks, but seeing that just a core bump up to 580 brings it close to or better than the X1900XT at stock is a nice reference mark to have.Frackal - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
I doubt that considering a 7900GTX with higher core/memory clocks than that usually gets beaten by an X1900XT at stock. (Not to mention to make that fair they'd have to OC the x1900xt too)This review was relevantly incomplete IMO because it did not show the huge difference between an x1900xt and 7900gt with AA/AF on
yacoub - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
Nor the huge difference in audible noise levels, for that matter. My 7900GT is practically silent except when in 3D games, and even then it's not a jet engine.yacoub - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
I recently upgraded from an X800XL to a 7900GT (eVGA N584 model - hsf is copper and covers the RAM chips). I run the 91.33 drivers.I am extremely pleased with this upgrade choice. The card is actually quieter than my Sapphire X800XL Ultra was (it had the Zalman hsf on it stock but the fan was ball-bearing and made a bit of noise).
My rig:
3200+ Venice
1GB DDR RAM dual-channel
A8N-SLI Premium
Games:
CS:Source
Homeworld 2
Haven't reinstalled other games yet but considering the great improvement I noticed in CS:S, I imagine FEAR, NFSMW, and the other games I own but don't currently have installed would also see a large jump in performance. Not only did I gain fps and eliminate the big dips I experienced in busy scenes with the X800XL, I'm also at max graphical settings (everything High) and anywhere from 2xAA and 4xAF up to 4xS AA and 8xAF, and this is at 1680x1050 (20" widescreen).
Very satisfied with the purchase. This cost me less than the X800XL did nine months ago and performs probably 40-60% better, if not more considering the improved graphical settings on top of the fps gain.
vailr - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
When are the DX 10.0 cards going to available?And, what new assortment of ATI or nVidia GPU's will be on the DX 10.0 cards?
Will there be cheap [<$150] DX 10.0 cards?
Warder45 - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
I don't see the 7600GT OC 600/750 listed in the charts on the page talking about the 7600GT OC. Lots of 7900GT models though.