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We continued
testing the Leadtek and Abit FX 5900s with Ubi-Soft's
Splinter Cell, using the Oil Rig demo created by the folks
at Beyond 3D. This is another test that is heavily
dependant on Pixel Shader performance. Throughout the
custom demo, pixel shaders are used to render realistic
looking ocean water surrounding a geometrically complex Oil
Rig.
As we've mentioned in the past, in its current form,
anti-aliasing is "broken" with Splinter Cell. Due to
this limitation, we do not have any AA scores listed in the
graphs below.
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Benchmarks
With Splinter Cell |
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More DX Shaders |
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At 1024x768, the
A350 and Siluro posted the exact same score of 41.1 FPS.
When we raised the resolution to 1600x1200, the Leadtek card
nudged slightly ahead of Abit's Siluro, but the .1 FPS
advantage falls well within the margin of error. Also
note that the v45.23 Detonators gave the 5900s about a 3%
performance boost in this test. A 3% increase in
performance may not be earth shattering, but we'll take it.
Splinter Cell favors the Radeon 9800 Pro's architecture, as
is evident by the 10% lead it held onto at both resolutions.
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Head-to-Head Performance
With
Comanche 4 |
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Semper Fi |
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For our next
test, we used Novalogic's combat helicopter simulator
Comanche 4. Comanche 4 uses DX8 class pixel and vertex
shaders to produce some of the realistic visuals used
throughout the game. Unlike Splinter Cell and Gun
Metal, this benchmark is heavily influenced by CPU and
system memory performance, especially at lower resolutions.
At higher resolutions when AA and Aniso are enabled,
however, the video card becomes much more of a limiting
factor.
Once again, we
saw the Leadtek WinFast A350 and the Abit Siluro FX 5900
OTES performing at essentially the same levels at both
resolutions, regardless of what settings were used.
Switching from the v44.67s to the new v45.23s again yielded
another small performance increase when anti-aliasing and
anisotropic filtering were enabled. The Radeon 9800
Pro excels in this game, besting the 5900s in all but one
configuration (1600x1200 - 6X AA).
UT2003 & Quake 3 Benchmarks
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