ATI Radeon X800 XL Review

Name: ATI Radeon X800 XL Review - Page 6
Brand: ATI

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, December 15, 2004, 08:01 AM EDT

Head-to-Head Performance With Tomb Raider: AOD

The Anti-Greatest!

Tomb Raider: AOD

Although Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness won't be winning any "Game of the Year" awards, because the game basically stinks, it does employ some fairly interesting pixel shader 2.0 quality effects, such as depth of field blur. We've recorded a custom demo of Lara jogging through an indoor garden area in the "Prague3" map. When using the Pixel Shader 2.0 code path, this area of the game utilizes a DOF (depth of field) blurring effect to enhance the sense of depth and vastness. We ran our custom demo at a resolution of 1,024 x 768 and then again at 1,600 x 1,200, using both the Pixel Shader 1.4 and 2.0 code paths (with and without 4x antialiasing enabled in the PS 2.0 tests).

Our custom Tomb Raider: AOD benchmark was a definite strong point for the new Radeon X800 XL. Obviously, because they're based on the same core architecture, but clocked at varying speeds, the higher clocked X850 and X800 XT outperformed the X800 XL here. The NVIDIA powered cards didn't fare too well though. In this test the X800 XL was about to outpace the GeForce 6800 Ultra and GeForce 6800 GT at both resolutions, and in all test configurations but one. The GeForce 6800 Ultra squeaked by the X800 XL in the 1600x1200 PS 2.0 test when 4X AA was enabled, but that was it. In every other configuration the Radeon X800 XL beat its NVIDIA based competition. Sometimes by margins exceeding 12%.

Tags: ATI, Radeon, ATI Radeon, review, view, IE, 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