Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Performance
We make use of the Lighthouse demo for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. We have been using this benchmark for quite some time and facilitate automation with the scripts published at Beyond 3D. This benchmark is fairly close to in game performance for our system, but midrange users may see a little lower real world performance when tested with a lower speed processor.
Our settings all used the highest quality level possible, with the exception of the X800 GTO. All other cards used the SM3.0 settings with all the options enabled. The X800 GTO doesn't support this, and so runs at a lower quality setting. The end result is higher performance from the X800 GTO than we would expect to see in an apples to apples test. As the SM3.0 features and antialiasing are mutually exclusive, we left AA disabled and focused on the former. We set anisotropic filtering to 8x for all cards.
For this 3rd person stealth game, ultra high frame rates are not necessary. We have a good playing experience at 25 fps or higher. There may be the framerate junkie out there who likes it a little higher, but our recommendation is based on consistency of experience and ability to play the game without a degraded experience.
Once again our target resolution is 1600x1200, and once again the X800 GTO (stock), X1600 XT, and 6600 GT aren't able to keep up here. The stock 7900 GT and X1900 GT perform identically once again, so an overclocked option would certainly be a better bet. The 7600 GT is certainly playable, but the X1900 GT offers a significantly better experience at this resolution.
** This card used SM2.0 and lower quality settings
At lower resolutions, the 7900 GT is able to surpass the X1900 GT in performance, but in this case the X1900 GT just scales better. The X800 GTO performing better than the 7600 GT is due to the rendering quality difference, but this is the performance level X800 GTO owners will see. While we can compare the framerate data, in terms of experience we must remember the quality difference.
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DerekWilson - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
look again :-) It should be fixed.pervisanathema - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
You post hard to read line graphs of the benchmarks that show the X1900XT crushing the 7900GT with AA/AF enabled.Then you post easy to read bar charts of an O/Ced 7900GT barely eeking out a victory over the X1900XT ins some benchmarks and you forget to turn on AA/AF.
I am not accussing you guys of bias but you make it very easy to draw that conclusion.
yyrkoon - Sunday, August 13, 2006 - link
Well, I cannot speak for the rest of the benchmarks, but owning a 7600GT, AND Oblivion, I find the Oblivion benchmarks not accurate.My system:
Asrock AM2NF4G-SATA2
AMD AM2 3800+
2GB Corsair DDR2 6400 (4-4-4-12)
eVGA 7600GT KO
The rest is pretty much irrelivent. With this system, I play @ 1440x900, with high settings, simular to the benchmark settings, and the lowest I get is 29 FPS under heavey combat(lots of NPCs on screen, and attacking me.). Average FPS in town, 44 FPS, wilderness 44 FPS, dungeon 110 FPS. I'd also like to note, that compared to my AMD 3200+ XP / 6600GT system, the game is much more fluid / playable.
Anyhow, keep up the good work guys, I just find your benchmarks wrong from my perspective.
Warder45 - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
The type of chart used just depends on if they tested multiple resolutions vs a single resolution.Similar to your complaint, I could say they are bias towards ATI by showing how the X1900XT had better marks across all resolutions tested yet only tested the 7900GT OC at one resolution not giveing it the chance to prove itself.