ATi Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition

Name: ATi Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition - Page 7
Brand: ATi

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, December 01, 2004, 08:00 AM EDT

Performance Comparisons With Splinter Cell

Stealthy Combat

Splinter Cell

Splinter Cell's version 1.2 patch includes three prerecorded 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 performance with this game. Beyond 3D's demo is targeted squarely at Pixel Shader performance. Shaders are used to render realistic-looking ocean water surrounding an oil rig in the demo and are used to simulate a night vision effect for a brief period. Take note that antialiasing doesn't work with Splinter Cell in its current state. Due to this fact, we do not have any AA scores listed in the graphs below.

The Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition returned to the top of the charts in the Splinter Cell benchmark. Here, although its margin of victory was very slight, the X850 took the top spot in the low-resolution test, followed very closely by the GeForce 6800 Ultra. With the resolution set to 1,600 x 1,200, the Radeon X850 XT PE was able to pull ahead by a more significant margin. In the high-resolution test, the X850 XT PE outpaced ATi's previous flagship card by 1.65 FPS, or 2.5%, and it outran the GeForce 6800 Ultra by 5.55 FPS, or roughly 8.9%.

Tags: ATI, Radeon, edition, ATI Radeon, XT, platinum, PLA, 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