HIS Radeon X1650 XT IceQ Turbo and Radeon X1650 XT iSilence II
Need for Speed: Carbon
|
Dating back to the days of floppy disks, EGA, and the Lamborghini Countach, the Need For Speed franchise is undoubtedly one of the most popular in gaming history. The most recent addition to the franchise is Need For Speed: Carbon, a racing-sim loaded with muscle cars and exotics in addition to a number of lighting and special graphics effects. We ran these NFS: Carbon benchmarks by utilizing FRAPS and tracking framerates on the same track, using the same car with every card. The game was configured with all of its graphics-related options set to their maximum values, with motion blur enabled. We tested the game at resolutions of 1280 x 1024 and 1600 x 1200 with 4X AA and 16X anisotropic filtering enabled simultaneously. |
The Need for Speed: Carbon demo put the greatest hurt on our test systems and the results clearly show the frame rates as much lower than what we've become accustomed to seeing. Even the semi-powerful X1950 Pro struggled to get as high as 35 fps, and that's at our lowest resolution. From there, it's a direct line down to the two X1650 XTs, first the higher clocked IceQ Turbo and then the iSilence II. The GeForce 7600 GT and X1600 Pro cards are a distant fourth and fifth place, operating at almost half of the levels of the X1650 XTs. That said, this game title certainly doesn't require nearly the same frame rate as say Quake 4 does, in order to feel fluid and playable.