ASUS Extreme AX600XT vs. MSI PCX 5750: Budget PCI-Express

Name: ASUS Extreme AX600XT vs. MSI PCX 5750: Budget PCI-Express - Page 5
Brand: ASUS

by Jeff Bouton — Tuesday, September 28, 2004, 07:00 PM EDT

Performance Comparisons With Final Fantasy XI Benchmark 2 v1.01

A Classic Console Franchise On The PC

Final Fantasy XI

The Final Fantasy franchise is well known to console gamers, but Squaresoft has since made the jump to the PC with a MMORPG version of this classic. The Final Fantasy XI benchmark runs through multiple scenes from the game and displays a final score every time a full cycle of the demo is completed. Although the demo is meant to check an entire system's readiness to play the game, the number of frames rendered scales when different video cards are used. Lower scores indicate some frames were dropped to complete the demo in the allotted time. The scores below were taken with the demo set to its "High Resolution" option (1,024 x 768), with anti-aliasing disabled.

While there is no shortage of MMORPG games on the market, Final Fantasy XI appears to be one of the few that offers a benchmark based on the acutal game engine. When the test completed, we found the ASUS EAX 600XT took a firm 1500 point lead over the PCX 5750. We'll watch to see if this imbalance continues as we progress through our testing.

Benchmarks With Halo

Halo - All Patched & Ready To Go!

Halo

For many gamers, the release of Halo for the PC marked the end of a long wait, since it was originally released as an Xbox exclusive a few years back. No additional patches or tweaks are needed to benchmark with Halo, as Gearbox has included all of the necessary information in its README file. The Halo benchmark runs through four of the cut-scenes from the game, after which the average frame rate is recorded. We patched the game using the latest v1.04 patch and ran this benchmark twice, once at 1,024 x 768 and then again at 1,600 x 1,200. Anti-aliasing doesn't work properly with Halo at the moment, so all of the tests below were run with anti-aliasing disabled.

With Halo, the tides shifted in favor of the PCX 5750 at 1,024 x 768, with the MSI card taking a slight 3FPS lead. When we increased the resolution to 1,600 x 1,200, however, the pendulum swung back to the ASUS card, which returned to the lead with a 6FPS lead.