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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
120 Comments
View All Comments
poohbear - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
$500 too much? there are cars for $300, 000+, but u dont see the majority of ppl complaining because they're NOT aimed at u and me and ferrari & lamborghini could care less what we think cause we're not their target audience. get over yourself, there ARE cards for you in the $100+ $300, so what are u worried about?timmiser - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
While I agree with what you are saying, we are already on our 3rd generation of $500 high end graphic cards. If memory serves, it was the Nvidia 6800 that broke the $500 barrier for a single card solution.I'm just happy it seems to have leveled off at $500.
Zebo - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Actually GPU's in general scale very well with price/performance and this is no exception. Twice as fast as a 850 XT which you can get for $275 should cost twice as much or $550 which it does. If you want to complain about prices look at CPUs, high end memory and raptors/SCSI which higher line items offer small benefits for huge price premiums.fishbits - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Geez, talk about missing the point. News flash: Bleeding edge computer gear costs a lot. $500 is an excellent price for the best card out. Would I rather have it for $12? Yes. Can I afford/justify a $500 gfx card? No, but more power to those who can, and give revenue to ATI/Nvidia so that they can continue to make better cards that relatively quickly fall within my reach. I can't afford a $400 9800 pro either... whoops! They don't cost that much now, do they?Short-sighted again. Look at the launch of Unreal games for instance. Their code is always awesome on the performance side, but can take advantage of more power than most have available at release time. You can tell them their code is shoddy, good luck with that. In reality it's great code that works now, and your gaming enjoyment is extended as you upgrade over time and can access better graphics without having to buy a new game. Open up your mind, quit hating and realize that these companies are giving us value. You can't afford it now, neither can I, but quit your crying and applaud Nv/ATI for giving us constantly more powerful cards.
aschwabe - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Agreed, I'm not sure how anyone constitutes $500 for ONE component a good price. I'll pay no more than 300-350 for a vid card.bamacre - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Hear, hear!! A voice of reason!rqle - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
I like new line graph color and interface, but i like bar graph so much more. Never a big fan over SLI or Crossfire on the graph, makes its a distracting, especially it only represent a small group. Wonder if crossfire and sli can have their own graph by themselves or maybe their own color. =)DerekWilson - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
it could be possible for us to look at multigpu solutions serpeately, but it is quite relevant to compare single card performance to multigpu performance -- especially when trying to analyze performance.Live - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Good reading! Good to see ATI getting back in the game. Now lets see some price competition for a change.I don’t understand what CrossFire XTX means. I thought there was no XTX crossfire card? Since the Crossfire and XT have the same clocks it shouldn’t matter if the other card is a XTX. By looking at the graphs it would seem I was wrong but how can this be? This would indicate that the XTX has more going for it then just the clocks but that is not so, right?
Bha I'm confused :)
DigitalFreak - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
My understanding is that Crossfire is async, so both cards run at their maximum speed. The XTX card runs at 650/1.55, while the Crossfire Edition card runs at 625/1.45. You're right, there is no Crossfire Edition XTX card.