Halo Performance

While performance on this game is a little lower than we'd like to see for a FPS at high resolutions, the visual effects and eye candy are very cool. The sun shining through the trees provides a nice visual effect.



From the data, ATI and NVIDIA are in a dead heat on this game with negligible difference in performance. It is important to note that anyone out there running the current 45.23 Detonators will get something along the lines of a 65% performance increase with no loss in image quality for the FX series of cards with the new 52 series of drivers due out late this month.

Yes, they actually did do that. NVIDIA got a 65% performance increase in their new drivers. Drivers really are making that big a difference as the way the code gets to the hardware is playing a larger roll as the complexity of the hardware increases. As both ATI and NVIDIA diverge from each other while still needing to maintain support for 2 common APIs, we will be seeing more and more differences in how each card will perform based on that common code. But I'll touch on that a little more later…

Halo IQ Homeworld 2 IQ no AA/AF
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  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link

    You need to look at the FSAA each card empolys...go back and look again at the screenies, this time looking at all the jaggis on each card....especially in F1, it doesn't even look like nVidia is using FSAA....while on the ATI, it's smooth ......I don't think it's a driver comparison, just the fact that ATI FSAA is far better at doing the job....At least I think that's what he's talking about..hard to tell any IQ differences when the full size screenies are not working, but poor FSAA kinda jumps out at you (If your'e used to smooth FSAA)

    Also worth noting, nVidia made great jumps in performance in DX9, but nothing that actually used PS2.0 shaders : (
  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link

    #14 Blurred? Are you not wearing your glasses or something? Nice and sharp for me...
  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link

    of course you do, you're a fanATIc...
  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link

    I like the way he discounts Tomb raider. Saying it is just not a good game. Thats a matter of opinion. It almost seems like he trys to undermine that game before revealing any benches.

    And the benches for that game are not done in FPS but on percentage lost on PS2.0.

    On first inspection of the graphs it appears that Nvidia is leading in tombraider. But if you look at the blurred print on the graph it does say "lower is better" Very clever!

    Why no FPS in that game?

    Nice information in this review but it almost seems that he is going out of his way to excuse Nvidia.

    I smell a rat in this review.

  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link

    #3, #7: If you take the screens into photoshop and observe the result of their 'difference', you'll see that there's a fairly significant difference between the 45's and 3.7's, but almost no difference whatsoever between the 52's and 3.7's. In most of those screenshots it's impossible to do this since the shots aren't neccessarily from the exact same position each time. Try the ut2k3 ones for example. Also these are jpeg's, so there'll be a little fuzz due to the differences in compression.

    Also, if I need to take two screenshots into photoshop to be able to discern any difference between them, that's really saying alot. And since we can't refer to a reference software shot, it could be ati's driver that's off for all we know.

    In any event I'm pleasantly surprised with nvidia. Their IQ has definitely caught up, and their performance is quickly improving. Hopefully the cat3.8's will pull a similar stunt.
  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link

    No he's just a "fanny"
  • AgaBooga - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link

    They must have a reason for choosing those drivers. Anandtech has been around long enough for that :)

    The reason is probably along the lines of when they started this benchmarking because they did soooo many games, resolutions, AA and AF levels, times the number of different cards, etc. That takes quite some time. Had they waited for the newer ATI drivers, it may have delayed this article one, or even two weeks till publishing. Also, they did mention they will do a followup articles with the new drivers, so patience is the key here.
  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link

    #8 seems like a fanboy himself
  • dvinnen - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link

    well #8, Nvidia was able to do it with the wonder driver, I dn't see why Ati can't
  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link

    LOL, the ATI fanboys are already coming out of the woodwork. Listen #3 and #7, it's a fact, there is no IQ difference at all between the 50 Dets and the 3.7 CATs. And if you honestly believe you're going to see much of a difference with the CAT 3.8's....you're just stupid.

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