Asus EAX1600PRO and EN7600GT - HDMI On Tap
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
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;) SC: Chaos Theory |
Based on a heavily modified version of the Unreal Engine, enhanced with a slew of DX9 shaders, lighting and mapping effects, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is gorgeous with its very immersive, albeit dark, environment. The game engine has a shader model 3.0 code path that allows the GeForce 6 & 7 Series of cards, and the new X1000 family of cards, to really shine, and a recent patch has implemented a shader model 2.0 path for ATI's X8x0 generation of graphics hardware. For these tests we enabled the SM 3.0 path on all of the cards we tested. However, High Dynamic Range rendering was disabled so that we could test the game with anti-aliasing enabled (a future patch should enable AA with HDR on the X1K family). We benchmarked the game at resolutions of 1280x1024 and 1600x1200, both with and without anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. |
The Splinter Cell results don't fare too much better for the EAX1600PRO. Frame rates, even at the lowest settings, barely reached the mid-20's and went down from there. The EN7600GT's numbers were much more respectable, topping out near 60fps at 1280x1024 and taking the highest frame rate during that test. It lost a bit of steam, however, when we enabled AA and aniso. The X1650 XT easily leap-frogged the 7600 GT in these tests, outgunning it by 15-25%.
