Mid Range GPU Performance w/ Bloom Enabled

Just as was the case with the high end tests, we ran a separate set of benchmarks with HDR lighting disabled to allow for comparison to ATI's Radeon X850/X800 series. The question we're looking to answer here is what upgrade options X850/X800 owners have in the mid-range market segment.


The white lines within the bars indicate minimum frame rate

With HDR disabled, if you've got anything faster than an X800 XL from ATI you are sitting very pretty. While the GeForce 7900 GT and X1800 XT offer some pretty compelling performance, high end X850/X800 owners really don't have a reason to upgrade unless they want better image quality. Even the X800 Pro performs pretty well here; fortunately (or unfortunately) for owners of ATI's X850/X800 series, if you're not going to spend a lot of money on a GPU upgrade then your best bet is actually to stay put and just turn down your detail settings.

NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 GS does reasonably well here, but it looks like Oblivion isn't very friendly to NVIDIA's GeForce 6 architecture as the vanilla ATI Radeon X800 offers similar performance.


The white lines within the bars indicate minimum frame rate

The performance picture doesn't really change all that much here for Radeon X850/X800 owners, their performance is still chart topping.


The white lines within the bars indicate minimum frame rate

Mid Range GPU Performance w/ HDR Enabled Final Words
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  • Crassus - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link

    quote:

    This first part will focus on high-end and mid-range PCIe GPU performance and future articles will look at CPU performance as well as low-end GPU and AGP platform performance if there is enough demand for the latter two.


    Here, demand *wave* (at least concerning an AGP platform review). I've got a trusty K8N Neo2 with a 939 3000+ and a 6800 GT that was sort of standard about 1 1/2 years ago and I'm trying to figure out if I would gain a FPS increase worth talking about switching over to PCIe, while staying in about the same price range, or getting a 7800 AGP, or just turning down settings and saving the money.

    Cheers and thanks for an article that I was very anxious to read.
  • Ozenmacher - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link

    Everyone argues about how bad the performance is outside. I am running a 7900 GT and I was getting around 20 fps outside, I truned the grass off completely and now I get over 30. And honestly, I don't even notice it. I tjhink the game looks better than the rather lame looking grass.
  • Madellga - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link

    I can't see any pictures in this article. I've tried both IE and Firefox, at 2 different computers.

    Is it only me or anyone else has the same?
  • JarredWalton - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link

    Can you see the graphs even?
  • nicolasb - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link

    I can't see any of the pictures either, including the graphs.

    I'm getting really fed up of this happening in Anandtech articlres: it's been happening on and off for months, now. Could you guys please <b>sort it out</b>? It's really very unprofessional to have allowed the problem to go on for this long.
  • JarredWalton - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link

    Nothing has changed on the images in a long time. Are you surfing from work or home? Do you have any ad blocking software? I suppose it could also be browser settings. I know you can configure Internet Explorer and Firefox to not load images by default, or to only load images for the originating web site. The article content comes from www.AnandTech.com or as the images come from images.AnandTech.com. There's really nothing for us to sort out if the problem is on your end, but hopefully my comments will help you solve your issues.
  • Madellga - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link

    I found it. The feature causing the problem is Privacy Control. I just turned off and now the page works fine.
  • JarredWalton - Friday, April 28, 2006 - link

    I'm glad to hear you got it working. If it's any consolation, I've felt that every release of Norton Internet Security since 2002 has actually been a step backwards. The latest release seems more bulky, slow, and more prone to causing errors. There was a time where I thought Norton Utilities was the greatest thing ever in terms of useful software. Windows 95 started to reduce its usefulness, and as far as I'm concerned windows XP pretty much killed it off. These days, I feel like I can get better overall quality from free software in many cases.

    I think the only reason Symantec is still in business is due to all of their bundling agreements with various computer manufacturers. So many systems come with Symantec software preinstalled as a 90 day trial, but lucky for me I've found that 90 days gives me more than enough time to uninstall the junk! I've found that a hardware firewall is generally much more useful, in that it's less likely to cause problems, either with web sites or with system performance.
  • Madellga - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link

    It was definetely not the browser. All options are default.

    Add blocking is turned off. I have to find which Norton feature is causing the issue. Interesting enough, the problem seems to happen only at Anandtech.
  • Madellga - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link

    Thanks for the reply. I am surfing from home and I have this problem since a couple of weeks. Based on the comments above, the only thing I have running that could be the problem is Norton Internet Security......

    I just turned off the Norton Firewall and reloaded the page. Now it works!

    Jeez, it sounds silly but I expected more from Symantec. And my copy is an original one, legally purchased - no hacking.

    That feels awful....

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