ATI Radeon X1900 XTX And CrossFire: R580 Is Here

Name: ATI Radeon X1900 XTX And CrossFire: R580 Is Here - Page 12
Brand: ATI

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, January 24, 2006, 08:00 AM EDT

Performance Comparisons with Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.05

Details: http://www.splintercell3.com/us/

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 1,280 x 1024 and 1,600 x 1,200, both with and without anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering.

NVIDIA's 512MB GeForce 7800 GTX was dominant in this benchmark before today, but ATI's new Radeon X1900 XTX reclaims the overall performance lead in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. Both the X1900 XT and X1900 XTX were able to outpace the GeForce 7800 GTX, by margins ranging from about 4% to 10% depending on the test configuration, and X1900 CrossFire was faster than a pair of 7800 GTX 512s running in SLI mode as well. Framerates were competitive when no anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering was used but with AA and Aniso, ATI had a more pronounced advantage.

Tags: ATI, Radeon, Fire, CrossFire, SSF, x1, OS, r580, ATI Radeon, 580, OSS, XT, here, R5, and

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