ATI's New High End and Mid Range: Radeon X1950 XTX & X1900 XT 256MB
by Derek Wilson on August 23, 2006 9:52 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Performance
We make use of the Lighthouse demo for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. We have been using this benchmark for quite some time and facilitate automation with the scripts published at Beyond 3D. This benchmark is fairly close to in game performance for our system, but midrange users may see a little lower real world performance when tested with a lower speed processor.
Our settings all used the highest quality level possible including the extra SM3.0 features. As the advanced shaders and antialiasing are mutually exclusive under SC:CT, we left AA disabled and focused on the former. We set anisotropic filtering to 8x for all cards.
For this 3rd person stealth game, ultra high frame rates are not necessary. We have a good playing experience at 25 fps or higher. There may be the framerate junkie out there who likes it a little higher, but our recommendation is based on consistency of experience and ability to play the game without a degraded experience.
NVIDIA's 7900 GTX SLI does almost as well as X1900 CrossFire, but the 14% advantage X1950 CF has over X1900 CF puts it way out in front. The 7950 GX2 once again splits the difference between the X1950 XTX and the 7900 GTX SLI.
While X1950 XTX leads all the single-GPU single-card solutions, there really isn't that much difference between the playability of the X1900 XTX, 7900 GTX, and X1900 XT. The extra 256MB of RAM the original X1900 XT has does give it a 7.5% advantage over it's baby brother at this resolution.
ATI leads again in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, both in dual-GPU and single-GPU configurations. Here the GX2 occupies a nice middle ground, and all of the tested cards manage to remain playable up through 2048x1536. Using the "Chuck Patch" it is also possible to enable AA+HDR on ATI hardware, though time constraints and the fact that there is no NVIDIA equivalent caused us to skip this test for now.
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nextsmallthing - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
Did anyone else notice that the specs for some of the NVIDIA cards are wrong? For example, the core clock of the 7900GTX is supposed to be 650 MHz, not 700 MHz, and the core clock of the 7900GT should be 450 MHz, not 470 MHz. Also, the pipeline configuration for the 7300GT (according to Wikipedia anyway) should be 8 pixel & 4 vertex.This many mistakes really makes me question the accuracy of other specs I read on Anandtech.
(And by the way, would somebody please inform the DailyTech writers that it's "Xbox 360", not "XBOX 360". And yes I'm aware of the conventions that punctuation goes inside quotes and you shouldn't start sentences with "and".)
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
The 7900GTX/GT clock speeds that were listed were actually vertex clock speeds, not general core clock speeds, so they were technically correct (parts of the GPU do run at those frequencies) just not comparable to the other numbers. They have been corrected.The 7300GT is indeed 8 pipes, that was a copy/paste error. Thanks for the heads up.
Take care,
Anand
nextsmallthing - Thursday, August 24, 2006 - link
Wow--prompt correction and courteous reply. I'm impressed, and my faith in Anandtech is restored!Josh7289 - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
From the looks of the pricing structure for ATI's cards on the first page, and especially from the looks of the pricing structure for ATI's cards after they simplify their lineup, it looks like ATI is giving up on midrange cards, from $100 - $200. The 7600GT and the upcoming 7900GS both are alone in that price range (about $150 and $200, respecitively), with no competition from ATI, so it seems they really are giving that price range to Nvidia.Am I right with this or am I seriously missing something?
yyrkoon - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
there is a x1800GTO2, price last I looked was around $230, of course, they released it rather quietly. Still, thats about $90 higher than the 7600 GT (or in my case the eVGA 7600GT KO).OrSin - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
I wondering the same thing. Are they going to stop making any 1800's. They should be dropping in this price range nicely. Not sure how competative they are with the 7900's. And now that the 7900GS is coming out the 1800 might be just too outclassed. (you guys just missed a great deal on woot 7900GS for $145).I hope 1800 drop is still being made and I hope it drops to $150-180 range to fill that gap.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
I think they've already stopped making all of the X1800 series, but there are still cards floating around.Josh7289 - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
The X1900GT is a card meant to compete with the stock 7900GT, and as such is somewhere around the $200 - $250 price range.As for the X1950 Pro and X1650 XT, what are these supposed to compete against and at what prices. More importantly, when are these supposed to launch?
coldpower27 - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
As well the X1650 XT is also in the works.coldpower27 - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
X1950 Pro, is upcoming, as well they still have the X1900 GT.