Asus AX800 XT (Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition)

Name: Asus AX800 XT (Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition) - Page 10
Brand: Asus

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, August 17, 2004, 01:00 PM EDT

Benchmarks and Comparisons With Far Cry

DX9 effects galore.

Far Cry

If you've been on top of the gaming scene, you probably know that Far Cry is one of the most visually impressive games to be released on the PC to date. Far Cry gives us a taste of what is to come in next generation 3D Gaming on the PC. We benchmarked the graphics cards in this review with a custom recorded demo run taken in the "Catacombs" area checkpoint, at various resolutions without AA or Aniso Filtering enabled and then with 4X AA enabled, and lastly with 4X AA and 16X Aniso enabled together.

To paraphrase a disclaimer about these FarCry numbers from a previous review: Performance in this game is going to change dramatically when the v1.2 patch is officially re-released in the next few weeks. With the new patch, SM 3.0 support will be available to the GeForce 6 series of cards, SM2.0b will be made available to the Radeon X800s, and instancing support will be available to both. All of which increase performance. For now though, if you bought the game today, and installed it today, without using any beta drivers or patches, this is how the cards we tested would fare.

With that said, it's clear that at the moment, the AX800 XT is the best choice for FarCry players. At 1024x768, the AX800 XT outpaced the GeForce 6800s at all three test configurations, especially when AA and aniso were enabled. At 1600x1200 it was a much closer race. With the exception of the 4X AA test where the 6800 Extreme Edition and AX800 XT finished in a dead-heat, the AX800 XT was clearly superior, outpacing the 6800 EE by about 9%.

Tags: Asus, ATI, Radeon, edition, XT, platinum, PLA, X8

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com