Mainstream/Midrange Performance

Midrange


Rainbow Six: Vegas is a graphically intensive game, but as we said, we didn't have to play it at the highest resolution for it to look good. 1024x768 isn't a bad compromise to get a good balance of performance and graphics out of the game. When we step down to the midrange cards, this is really the most that any of these cards can handle at the higher detail settings. The X1650 XT is your best choice for playing this game at 1024x768 at the highest settings, but some overclocking might still be necessary. The slightly higher price of the X1650 XT (if you can find it right now) would still be a better choice for this game than the 7600 GT - its direct competitor from NVIDIA - because of the extra performance we see here.

Now let's look at how these cards perform with the same benchmark at the lower quality settings.

Midrange


We can see that with NVIDIA, the amount of performance gain we generally see from turning the graphics quality settings down varies from around 40% to 45%. With ATI however, the performance gains are around 55% to 60%. This means obviously we'll have a better chance of picking up more performance and playing the game at a higher resolution with ATI cards by turning the quality settings down.

Test Setup and High-End Performance Low-End Performance
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  • 100proof - Thursday, December 28, 2006 - link

    Matching statistics to the GamerID alone is useless. So why include the GamerID at all? Is other information related to a Ubisoft GamerID account being shared? birthdate? gender?

    Anandtech will you investigate this?
  • BronxBartoni - Tuesday, December 26, 2006 - link

    I would really have loved to see the differences, if any, between single and multi core setups.
  • poohbear - Tuesday, December 26, 2006 - link

    thanks for the review anandtech, many of us are interested in new graphics engines and how they perform w/ current hardware.:)
  • unclebud - Tuesday, December 26, 2006 - link

    "I think the point Anandtech was trying to make is that they hope the performance gap can be reduced somewhat with driver/game updates."

    yeah, it hurts them so bad to admit it... just look at their past reviews in video for the absolute proof.
    i bet if they had their way, amd + ati would have never happened. they probably have nightmares every night about it? just my opinion/observation. the site owner needs to come back and review more! i miss his articles! augh!
  • CrystalBay - Tuesday, December 26, 2006 - link

    Go Sierra, never give in. You Rock Forever, Keep on patchin...
  • BikeDude - Monday, December 25, 2006 - link

    I don't care about 1600x1200 running full blast with all the settings enabled.

    Which cards will allow me to run this game at 2560x1600 using reasonable settings? (reasonable=good fps without tangos turning into stick figures)

    I have a 7800GTX now... Time to upgrade?
  • VooDooAddict - Tuesday, December 26, 2006 - link

    If you want to run at 2560x1600 then expect to be upgrading to the leading edge frequently. 8800GTX would be a good buy for you if you really want to run at 2560x1600.

    However, if you run at 1280x800 you'll be at a perfect scaling for that 2560x1600 monitor. (I'm assuming you have the lovely Dell 30") 1280x800 will still look great when it's running smoothly on your 7800GTX.
  • Spoelie - Monday, December 25, 2006 - link

    yes
  • Jodiuh - Monday, December 25, 2006 - link

    1. Instead of using the "suggested" scene for benching and telling us to expect worse perf, why not take a look at the most stressful scenarios?
    2. Would you say there might be more perf/better compat for 88's using the newer 97.02's...97.44's?
    3. Are these "ports" running better on ATI because they were deved mainly for 360? Thankfully PS3's out w/ NV inside then?
  • ariafrost - Monday, December 25, 2006 - link

    Looks like with my X850XT overclocked I may be able to run RSV at 1440x900... albeit with medium settings and the widescreen hack from WSGF.

    Graphics performance can only improve as the Unreal Engine 3 is tweaked/optimized. I wouldn't despair quite yet :P

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