Looking Back Pt. 2: X800 & Catalyst Under The Knife

Battlefield 2

As the newest game in our latest investigation, Battlefield 2 is almost too new to include. With only a handful of drivers released in the lifetime of the game, there’s a lack of data points to work with to draw a strong conclusion, but given the number of requests to include this game, we have included it anyhow. As a primarily large multiplayer game, Battlefield 2 strikes an interesting balance between the desire for high quality graphics and the need to be able to render a large firefight without slowing a system to a crawl. Battlefield 2 also is a unique game out of everything that we’ve tested because it’s the only game here that requires pixel shading, whereas everything else merely uses the ability if it’s there.

In spite of the lack of data points, the performance graph for Battlefield 2 is surprisingly boring. Outside of a performance improvement with the 5.07 drivers, the first drivers released after the game was launched, there’s a distinct lack of performance improvements. Considering how brutal that this game is, specifically, we would have expected a larger and more continuous performance improvement.

Catalyst 5.05 versus 6.01 (mouse over to see 5.05)

Looking at the screenshot comparison, there’s no change in image quality, which again is what we would expect given the lack of a performance change. We are, however, still intrigued by the game’s poor, blocky shadowing for such a modern title.