ATI Radeon X800 XL Review

Name: ATI Radeon X800 XL Review - Page 8
Brand: ATI

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

Benchmarks / Comparisons With Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory

Q3 Engine Based Freebie

Wolfenstein: ET

We also ran through a batch of timedemos with the OpenGL game Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. Wolfenstein: ET is a free, standalone multiplayer game that is based on the excellent Return to Castle Wolfenstein that was released a few years back. It uses a heavily modified version of the Quake 3 engine, which makes it a very easy-to-use benchmarking tool. We created our own custom demo and used the built-in timedemo feature to check each card's frame-rate. The tests below were run at 1,024 x 768 and again at 1,600 x 1,200 without anti-aliasing and with 4X AA and 8X anisotropic filtering enabled concurrently.

When using our custom demo, Wolfenstein: ET is essentially CPU bound at 1024x768, although the NVIDIA powered cards did have a distinct advantage once anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering was enabled. With the resolution cranked up to 1600x1200, there was more of a spread. At the higher resolution, the X850 XT and GeForce 6800 Ultra were neck-and-neck. The Radeon X800 XL couldn't quite keep up with the pack though, falling behind the GeForce 6800 GT by about 8% - 13%.

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