ATI Radeon X800 XL Review
Tomb Raider: AOD
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 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%.
