Gigabyte GV-NX79X512DB-RH

Name: Gigabyte GV-NX79X512DB-RH - Page 4
Brand: Gigabyte

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, June 13, 2006, 08:00 PM EDT

Performance Comparisons with Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.05

Details: http://www.splintercell3.com/us/

SC: Chaos Theory

Based on a heavily modified version of the Unreal Engine, enhanced with a slew of DX9 shaders, lighting and mapping effects, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is gorgeous with its very immersive, albeit dark, environment. The game engine has a shader model 3.0 code path that allows the GeForce 6 & 7 Series of cards, and the new X1000 family of cards, to really shine, and a recent patch has implemented a shader model 2.0 path for ATI's X8x0 generation of graphics hardware. For these tests we enabled the SM 3.0 path on all of the cards we tested. However, High Dynamic Range rendering was disabled so that we could test the game with anti-aliasing enabled (a future patch should enable AA with HDR on the X1K family). We benchmarked the game at resolutions of 1,280 x 1024 and 1,600 x 1,200, with 4X anti-aliasing and 16X anisotropic filtering enabled.

The Gigabyte GV-NX79X512DB, reference GeForce 7900 GTX, and Radeon X1900 XTX were evenly matched in the Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory benchmark. At both resolutions, only a couple of frames per second separated all of the single-GPU powered boards. The Radeon X1900 XTX slightly outpaced both of the GeForce 7900 GTXs we tested, but the differences in performance can hardly be considered significant. In a real-world gaming scenario, the XTX's advantage in this game would not be perceived by most gamers.

Tags: Gigabyte, x5, 2D, X79, X51

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