Fall '06 NVIDIA GPU Refresh - Part I: GeForce 7900 GS
by Derek Wilson on September 6, 2006 9:00 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.
While slightly outperformed by the X1900 GT, the 7900 GS is still a very good value for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. Playable frame rates can drop much lower than 30 fps, so spending less to get the stock 7900 GT might be a viable option in this case. The performance lead the X1900 GT holds over the 7900 GS in this case just isn't enough to make it a worth while alternative in SC:CT.
| Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory - No AA | |||||
800x600 |
1024x768 |
1280x1024 |
1600x1200 |
1920x1440 |
|
| ATI Radeon X800 GTO | 75.3 |
56.9 |
41.2 |
32.3 |
23 |
| ATI Radeon X1600 XT | 47.6 |
36.2 |
25.6 |
18.8 |
13.8 |
| ATI Radeon X1800 GTO | 79.6 |
59.1 |
40.9 |
28.7 |
21.9 |
| ATI Radeon X1900 GT | 101.9 |
78.8 |
57.6 |
43.7 |
31.9 |
| ATI Radeon X1900 XT 256MB | 131.2 |
103.2 |
76.7 |
58.8 |
43.1 |
| ATI Radeon X1900 XT | 137.9 |
108.5 |
79.8 |
61 |
45.6 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT | 44.6 |
32.1 |
22 |
16 |
10.6 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GS | 65.8 |
47.5 |
32.4 |
23.7 |
15.9 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT | 75.4 |
54.6 |
38.2 |
28.2 |
20.7 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT | 92.4 |
67.9 |
47 |
35 |
25.8 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS | 103.6 |
76.1 |
52.7 |
39.2 |
29 |
| XFX GeForce 7900 GS 480M Extreme | 110.1 |
81.1 |
56.1 |
41.8 |
30.9 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT | 112.5 |
83.5 |
58.1 |
43.5 |
32.1 |
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29 Comments
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munky - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
FEAR is a DX9 game, not OpenGL...
DerekWilson - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
I'm looking into this at the moment but having trouble finding documentation on it.I suppose, as I was recently testing quad sli and saw huge performance increases, I assumed the game must be using the 4 frame afr mode only possible in opengl (dx is limited to rendering 3 frames ahead). I'll keep looking for confirmation on this ...
MemberSince97 - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
Jupiter EX is a DX9 rendering engine...DerekWilson - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
corrected, thanks ... now I have to figure out why FEAR likes quad sli so much ...MemberSince97 - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
Nice writeup DW, I really like the mouseover performance % graphs...PrinceGaz - Thursday, September 7, 2006 - link
So do I, but there is one errorThat should be 14% and 25% advantages
The 7900GS has 20 PS while the 7900GT has 24 PS. That makes the 7900GS 20% slower than the 7900GT, but it makes the 7900GT 25% faster than the 7900GS. It's important to remember which one you're comparing it against when quoting percentages.
Hopefully the percentage performance difference in the graph itself was calculated correctly, or at least consistently.
PrinceGaz - Thursday, September 7, 2006 - link
Ooops sorry, please ignore my post. For some reason I thought for a moment the 7900GS had 16 PS and the 7900GT had 20 PS (despite writing the correct values in my comment). The article is correct, I was just getting confused.PS. an edit function would be nice.
Frackal - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
There is no way an X1900xt gets 75fps at 1600x1200 4xAA, at that same resolution and AA setting I get well over 120-130fps average with an X1900xtx. Most sites show it hitting at least 100+DerekWilson - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
if you use the built in demo features to run a timedemo with dice's own calculations you will get a very wrong (skewed upward) number. Dice themselves say that results over 100 fps aren't reliable.the problem is that they benchmark the load screen, and generally one card or the other will get better load screen performance -- for instance, the x1900 gt may get 300+fps while the 7900 gt may only get 200fps. (I just picked those numbers, but framerates for the load screen are well over 100 fps in most cases and drastically different between manufacturers).
not only does no one care about this difference on a load screen, but it significantly interferes with benchmark numbers.
the timedemo feature can be used to output a file with frametimes and instantaneous frames per second. we have a script that opens this file, removes the frame data for the load screen, and calculates a more accurate framerate average using only frame data for scenes rendered during the benchmark run.
this will decrease over all scores.
we also benchmark in operation clean sweep which has a lot of fog and water. we use a benchmark with lots of smoke and explosions and we test for some ammount of time in or near most vehicles.
splines - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
Ownage approved.