Fall '06 NVIDIA GPU Refresh - Part II: GeForce 7950 GT and SLI
by Derek Wilson on September 14, 2006 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Black & White 2 Performance
The AnandTech benchmark for Black & White 2 is a FRAPS benchmark. Between the very first tutorial land and the second land there is a pretty well rounded cut scene rendered in-game. This benchmark is indicative of real world performance in Black & White 2. We are able to see many of the commonly rendered objects in action. The most stressful part of the benchmark is a scene where hundreds of soldiers come running over a hill, which really pounds the geometry capabilities of these cards. At launch, ATI cards were severely outmatched when it came to B&W2 performance because of this scene, but two patches applied to the game and quite a few Catalyst revisions later give ATI cards a much needed boost in performance over what we first saw.
A desirable average framerate for Black & White 2 is anything over 20 fps. The game does remain playable down to the 17-19 fps range, but we usually start seeing the occasional annoying hiccup during gameplay here. While this isn't always a problem as far as getting things done and playing the game, any jerkiness in frame rate degrades the overall experience.
We did test with all the options on the highest quality settings under the custom menu. Antialiasing has quite a high performance hit in this game, and is generally not worth it at high resolutions unless the game is running on a super powerhouse of a graphics card. If you're the kind of person who just must have AA enabled, you'll have to settle for a little bit lower resolution than we tend to like on reasonably priced graphics cards. Black & White 2 is almost not worth playing at low resolutions without AA, depth of field, or bloom enabled. At that point, we tend to get image quality that resembles the original Black & White. While various people believe that the original was a better game, no one doubts the superiority of B&W2's amazing graphics.
At 1600x1200, the 7950 GT performs very similarly to the 512MB (and more expensive) X1900 XT. While even the 7900 GS is playable here, framerates on the level of the 7950 GT begin to allow the gamer to experiment with AA in the game.
Not much changes with resolution with respect to the 7950 GT. The performance gap between the 7950 GT and X1900 XT does narrow somewhat with increasing resolution, but the two are basically tied in performance. The 7900 GTX SLI becomes CPU limited at 1280x1024, so anything more than 7950 GT SLI is not necessary without a higher resolution or antialiasing. In general, NVIDIA cards seem to scale very slightly better than ATI under Black & White 2 at the tested resolutions and settings.
The AnandTech benchmark for Black & White 2 is a FRAPS benchmark. Between the very first tutorial land and the second land there is a pretty well rounded cut scene rendered in-game. This benchmark is indicative of real world performance in Black & White 2. We are able to see many of the commonly rendered objects in action. The most stressful part of the benchmark is a scene where hundreds of soldiers come running over a hill, which really pounds the geometry capabilities of these cards. At launch, ATI cards were severely outmatched when it came to B&W2 performance because of this scene, but two patches applied to the game and quite a few Catalyst revisions later give ATI cards a much needed boost in performance over what we first saw.
A desirable average framerate for Black & White 2 is anything over 20 fps. The game does remain playable down to the 17-19 fps range, but we usually start seeing the occasional annoying hiccup during gameplay here. While this isn't always a problem as far as getting things done and playing the game, any jerkiness in frame rate degrades the overall experience.
We did test with all the options on the highest quality settings under the custom menu. Antialiasing has quite a high performance hit in this game, and is generally not worth it at high resolutions unless the game is running on a super powerhouse of a graphics card. If you're the kind of person who just must have AA enabled, you'll have to settle for a little bit lower resolution than we tend to like on reasonably priced graphics cards. Black & White 2 is almost not worth playing at low resolutions without AA, depth of field, or bloom enabled. At that point, we tend to get image quality that resembles the original Black & White. While various people believe that the original was a better game, no one doubts the superiority of B&W2's amazing graphics.
At 1600x1200, the 7950 GT performs very similarly to the 512MB (and more expensive) X1900 XT. While even the 7900 GS is playable here, framerates on the level of the 7950 GT begin to allow the gamer to experiment with AA in the game.
Not much changes with resolution with respect to the 7950 GT. The performance gap between the 7950 GT and X1900 XT does narrow somewhat with increasing resolution, but the two are basically tied in performance. The 7900 GTX SLI becomes CPU limited at 1280x1024, so anything more than 7950 GT SLI is not necessary without a higher resolution or antialiasing. In general, NVIDIA cards seem to scale very slightly better than ATI under Black & White 2 at the tested resolutions and settings.
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pmcguire - Thursday, September 21, 2006 - link
Anyone tried the XFX card in a Zalman HD160 case?I have ordered one but now I am getting nervous that the heatsink is too high.
zemane - Saturday, September 16, 2006 - link
marine73 - Friday, September 15, 2006 - link
With some versions of the 7900GT costing $280, you'd have to be nuts not to spend the xtra $20 bucks to get the additional 256Mb of ram. The performance increase is obvious from the charts, and since most Nvidia cores do OC fairly well (my BFG is running 580/800) you could most likely get the 7950GT to peform like a 7900GTX, for about 150-200 bucks less. Now if only they can get them to be DirectX 10 compliant...Pastuch - Thursday, September 14, 2006 - link
In Canada you can buy an ATI/Saphire X1900xt 512mb for $299. A 7950GT goes for $350. These prices are pulled from this weeks flyer at NCIX.com, the Canadian Newegg.As always, Nvidia screws over Canadian customers.
yyrkoon - Monday, September 18, 2006 - link
Gee, lets see, I wonder if buying a graphics card that is currently based in my home country is cheaper than one that has to be imported . . .Wait until ATI moves to the US . . .
Pastuch - Thursday, September 14, 2006 - link
THe lowest price I can find in Canada on a 7900GT is $290.ROFL at Nvidia.
P.S. I actually would rather buy Nvidia but the prices up here are so out of whack I can't justify it.
coldpower27 - Friday, September 15, 2006 - link
Yeh, Nvidia currently is expensive in Canada, until prices normalize the X1900 XT 512 is a pretty good deal, as long as it remains in supply.xsilver - Thursday, September 14, 2006 - link
funny,down here in australia - its the other way around
nvidia is cheaper
7900gt = 374au ($280US approx
x1900xt = 410AU (308US approx)
ati is still the better buy because its faster.
it actually gets worse in the lower price bracket of x1900gt as they are quite hard to find and really expensive
xsilver - Thursday, September 14, 2006 - link
oh wait - just looked againthat x1900xt is the 256mb model
if u want the 512mb model
= 525au (395US)
7950gt 512mb = $430au = 325us
big difference!
splines - Friday, September 15, 2006 - link
Same with all electronics, pretty much. Everything from mobile phones up to the AUD$1000 PS3 - and Americans complain about $600?The really odd thing is we have the second highest standard of living in the world, yet our currency is also one of the most undervalued amongst western industrialised nations. Granted, our market is small, but 20-odd million people still have a lot of purchasing power.
*sighs* Maybe one day they'll take us seriously.