ATI Radeon X800XL 512MB & Catalyst 5.6 Driver Update

Name: ATI Radeon X800XL 512MB & Catalyst 5.6 Driver Update - Page 12
Brand: ATI

by Marco Chiappetta — Thursday, June 09, 2005, 08:30 AM EDT

Benchmarks with Chronicles of Riddick - Escape From Butcher Bay

Riddick & The D3 Engine

Chronicles of Riddick

Starbreeze Studios is responsible for creating this season's surprise hit (at least on the PC), The Chronicles of Riddick - Escape From Butcher Bay. Those familiar with movie will recall Butcher Bay was one of the prison options on tap for the main character. While the movie never actually made it to Butcher Bay, we find the main character right at home in this surprisingly good game. Not only does it boast excellent game play with stunning visuals and mature story line, the Chronicles of Riddick proves to be a tough challenge and a game worth buying, making it an excellent candidate for benchmarking.

Our custom Chronicles of Riddick benchmark didn't benefit greatly from the extra memory available on the 512MB Radeon X800XL, but the new Catalyst drivers increased performance slightly. The 512MB and 256MB board performed similarly at both resolutions, whether or not anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering was used, although the 512MB board was a bit faster overall. The same held true with the Catalyst v5.6 installed - performance was similar to the v5.5s, although it was a bit higher overall. What is amazing to us is how this game can bring these higher-end graphics cards to their knees performance wise. Since it's not a case of dramatically more stunning visuals and rendering work-load, although game and it's Doom 3 engine does look great, it must simply be less efficient coding that causes the performance profile on this title to look so soft on all of the 16 pipe GPUs we tested.

Tags: ATI, Radeon, Update, Date, PDA, drive, Catalyst, driver, ATI Radeon, Ive, TAL, 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