Half Life 2 GPU Roundup Part 1 - DirectX 9 Shootout
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 17, 2004 11:22 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Head to Head: ATI Radeon X700 XT vs. NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT
As far as PCI Express platforms go, the Radeon X700 XT and the GeForce 6600GT are about as evenly matched as you can get in terms of price and performance and thankfully they are both readily available today. Let's see how they perform head to head under Half Life 2:
In our first demo, the two basically tie - we aren't considering performance differences of ~3% or less to be anything significant.
| Half Life 2 AT_canals_08.dem | |||
ATI Radeon X700 XT |
NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT |
Performance Advantage |
|
| 1024 x 768 | 116.4 |
113.5 |
2.6% |
| 1280 x 1024 | 78.7 |
78.1 |
0.8% |
| 1600 x 1200 | 55.9 |
57.7 |
3.1% |
| 1024 x 768 - 4X AA | 75.3 |
72.7 |
3.6% |
| Winner | - |
- |
Tie |
Our second demo shows the X700 XT pulling ahead and definitely taking the lead when AA is enabled.
| Half Life 2 AT_coast_05.dem | |||
ATI Radeon X700 XT |
NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT |
Performance Advantage |
|
| 1024 x 768 | 133.5 |
129.6 |
3.0% |
| 1280 x 1024 | 112.3 |
107.9 |
4.1% |
| 1600 x 1200 | 81.9 |
78.5 |
4.3% |
| 1024 x 768 - 4X AA | 115.8 |
107.2 |
8.0% |
| Winner | - |
- |
X700 XT |
We have a tie once again in our third demo:
| Half Life 2 AT_coast_12.dem | |||
ATI Radeon X700 XT |
NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT |
Performance Advantage |
|
| 1024 x 768 | 115.7 |
113.6 |
1.8% |
| 1280 x 1024 | 88 |
88.2 |
0.2% |
| 1600 x 1200 | 63 |
64.4 |
2.2% |
| 1024 x 768 - 4X AA | 87.5 |
87.1 |
0.5% |
| Winner | - |
- |
Tie |
Our fourth demo shows the X700 XT pulling far ahead with AA enabled, but otherwise the two perform identically:
| Half Life 2 AT_prison_05.dem | |||
ATI Radeon X700 XT |
NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT |
Performance Advantage |
|
| 1024 x 768 | 119 |
116.1 |
2.5% |
| 1280 x 1024 | 79.4 |
77.2 |
2.8% |
| 1600 x 1200 | 55.5 |
55.7 |
0.4% |
| 1024 x 768 - 4X AA | 85.1 |
74.6 |
14.1% |
| Winner | - |
- |
X700 XT |
In our final demothe X700 XT manages to maintain the greatest performance advantage, even at 1600 x 1200 without AA the X700 XT is over 10% faster than the 6600GT.
| Half Life 2 AT_c17_12.dem | |||
ATI Radeon X700 XT |
NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT |
Performance Advantage |
|
| 1024 x 768 | 87.3 |
82.9 |
5.3% |
| 1280 x 1024 | 82.2 |
76.4 |
7.6% |
| 1600 x 1200 | 69.2 |
61.6 |
12.3% |
| 1024 x 768 - 4X AA | 77.4 |
70 |
10.6% |
| Winner | - |
- |
X700 XT |
We averaged all of the X700 XT's wins together to make up the table below. From the looks of it, the X700 XT is significantly faster when AA is enabled, but is otherwise a relative equal to the 6600GT. What is important to note here is that the sweet spot for image quality and performance on these two cards appears to be at 1280 x 1024, where they are both virtually equal in performance.
| Summary | |||
Average Performance Advantage (X700 XT over 6600GT) |
|||
| 1024 x 768 | 3.0% |
||
| 1280 x 1024 | 3.1% |
||
| 1600 x 1200 | 4.5% |
||
| 1024 x 768 - 4X AA | 7.3% |
||
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79 Comments
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araczynski - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
yawn, i'm too busy enjoy the game (6800gt) to read the article and/or care which card is better :) i'm playing at 1600x1200 0AA/4AF (2.4@3.3/1GB) and have absolutely no complaints, other then knowing that the game will eventually end :(Jeff7181 - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
#57... poorly :)blckgrffn - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
I would also like to to see how the 9200/9000 series Radeons perform too, and if you have extra time, the 8500/9100.Again, Thanks!
Jeff7181 - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
#16... that's correct, although the only REAL observation that needs to be made is that Half Life 2 makes heavy use of pixel shaders which is very GPU dependant, and GPU's are just now growing the required testicles to process those shaders :)blckgrffn - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
Anand -I would like to see how the 6600 performs. As an 8 pipe card, it should perform better than the 9600xt and a little under a 9700 Pro, but it would be interesting to see if that is true. It is a great budget PCIe card along with the x700.
Thanks!
Nat
eva2000 - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
nice review downloaded your demos to run on AMD64 3700+ @ 12x 222 = 2664mhz with 1GB BH-5 @ 222mhz 2-2-2-6 1T and Powercolor X800XT PE @ 520/560 and all demo results were within 3-4fps of the reviews :)Live - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
Good reading as always. Would like to see minimum FPS tough. I find it very important to see how low the cards drop when stressed. You can't see that with only average FPS.housecat - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
So... wheres the Nvidia SLI versus ATI results??Muwahahaha.
Avalon - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
Hey Anand, I have an interesting request. Could you try Rivatuner on your 6800, unlock its pipes, and then bench it again? :PJust kidding. Actually, I'm glad you've confirmed what I've been thinking...that AF hasn't been doing much for me. Since I'm running on a lowly 9700, I think I'll just turn it off now, and enjoy a nice speed boost.
PrinceGaz - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
How about throwing a GF 5600 and maybe even a GF 5200 in as well for part 2, as an awful lot of people have them. Ultra versions of either if you prefer.I don't have one of them myself as I'm still using a Ti4200, but it would be interesting to see how they stacked up in the DX8 codepath against the Ti4600 you are planning to test. And it should be worth a giggle to see just how "fast" the 5600 or 5200 can manage the DX9 codepath :)
Thanks to the resolution scaling-graphs this review included and how the fastest cards were generally CPU limited with that A64 4000+ when the resolution was dropped to 1024x768, I'm not sure how much a CPU scaling article for part 3 will show that can't already be quite accurately guesstimated from how different CPUs generally tend to perform in games. But a comparison of the Athlon 64 4000+, against an Athlon XP, a Prescott, a Northwood, and if time permits a fast P3, Duron and Celeron also, would be great.