High End Performance Tests
And now, we come to the extreme tests. Unfortunately, we couldn't push our tests beyond 2048x1536 this time around, so the 7800 GTX SLI setup is still not stretching its legs to its full potential (which is extremely impressive). For our 1920x1440 test (a little larger than HDTV's 1080p), the trend continues from the previous tests. This time around, we see that the SLI setup is steadily becoming less CPU bound under our AA/AF test. Without turning these features on, we do still bump into the CPU limit, however.
And our current highest end test, 2048x1536 still shows an incredible frame rate under the 7800 GTX SLI. Increasing AA/AF settings still can't hurt it too much, and even the single 7800 GTX is playable with all the options on at the highest resolution test that we ran. The 6800 Ultra and X850 XT are only playable at this resolution without AA enabled (though, the ATI part comes closer to being playable). It should go without saying that the mid-range cards are unplayable here.
For high end cards paired with a monitor that can handle it, 1920x1440 offers good AA performance. If the investment in a 7800 GTX seems worth it, nothing looks better than 2048x1536 with 4xAA/AF. Oddly enough, we can still see the difference between aliased and antialiased game play at these huge resolutions. Of course, the problem is only obvious on near vertical or near horizontal lines and is much less of an issue at huge resolutions than at, say, 1024x768.
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Questar - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
#10,Who told you that? An x700 has twice the pipes of a 9800pro, and is clocked much higher.
bob661 - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
Oh and I guess I'll be turning up the settings on my 6600GT.bob661 - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
#15I don't know about bias, but it would defintely not be scientific given the purpose of the article.
Aikouka - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
The point of these articles is to see how well the GPU scales as you change models. The article's focus is not in overall system performance in different price ranges, but how well different video cards perform against eachother and to do that, you kind of have to use the same hardware (with the exception of the card) or you really help to create a thing we like to call "bias."blckgrffn - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
I think that they could do a whole article with this engine and CPU performance + ram usage, let's hope if they do they don't neglect the AXP like they did for the HL2 benchmarks...Nat
jm20 - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
You have just benchmarked the highend, why not now cater to the rest (95%+) of the market. How many people pair a 6200TC with a FX-55? Do some realistic tests with a few different setups.Budget: AthlonXP 2000+, 512Mb ram, 8500/9000 pro
LowMid: AthlonXP-M @ 2.2-2.6Ghz, 512Mb ram, 9800 pro
HighMid: Athlon64 3200-3500+, 1Gb ram, 6800GT
Hacp - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
"(disclaimer: this is not actually possible)"LoL
Backslider - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
My 9600Pro does the job fine with med/high settings. When using 1GB of memory..jkostans - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
The X700 pro is essentially a 9800 pro but pci-e. So there's pretty much no difference in performance.geekfool - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
Where does the X800 Pure/XL/Pro fit in? And I'm sure that anyone with an Athlon FX 57 doesn't use GF 6200/ X300.