ATi Radeon X800 XT & X800 Pro - Heart Burn For The NV40
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 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 the 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 (1024x768), with anti-aliasing disabled. |
Final Fantasy XI certainly has a synthetic approach to its scoring system, since the results that are outputted aren't based on actual frame rate but instead a point system. The pack is closely grouped here with the edge going to the Radeon X800s, with even the 12 pipe X800 Pro overtaking the GF 6800U Extreme card.
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 Splinter Cell |
Splinter Cell's version 1.2 patch includes three pre-recorded demos and incorporates a previously unavailable benchmarking tool. The demos included with the patch are somewhat limited by CPU performance, however, so we opted for the custom Oil Rig demo created by the folks at Beyond 3D to test with this game. Beyond 3D's demo removes two CPU intensive routines while increasing dependence on Pixel Shader performance. Shaders are used to render realistic looking ocean water surrounding an Oil Rig in the demo, as well as simulating a night vision effect for a brief period. Also note that anti-aliasing doesn't work with Splinter Cell. Due to this fact, we do not have any AA scores listed in the graphs below. |
At this point we're beginning to see a pattern form, with the X800 XT's fill rate and pixel shader processing power affording it victory at high resolution, even over NVIDIA's goosed up GeForce 6800 Ultra Extreme. At 1024X768, ATi's scores look more like they are affected by driver immaturity more than anything else. We could speculate that ATi has a bit more performance they could wring out of their drivers, since clearly the horsepower is there, as is exhibited in the 1600X1200 resolution frame rates. Finally, it's amazing to see how these new generation cards effectively double the performance of their predecessors in this test and with Splinter Cell's game engine in general.
