MSI RX800: Radeon X800 XT (PCI Express)

Name: MSI RX800: Radeon X800 XT (PCI Express) - Page 10
Brand: MSI

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, November 23, 2004, 10:00 PM EDT

Benchmarks & Comparisons With Far Cry

DX9 Effects Galore.

Far Cry

If you've been on top of the gaming scene, you probably know that Far Cry is one of the most visually impressive games to be released on the PC to date. Although Doom 3 and Half Life 2 have both arrived, Far Cry still looks great in comparison, especially with the new v1.3 patch installed. Far Cry came along and gave us a taste of what was to come in next-generation 3D Gaming on the PC. We benchmarked the graphics cards in this review with a custom-recorded demo run taken in the "Catacombs" area checkpoint, at various resolutions without AA or Aniso Filtering enabled and then with 4X AA enabled along with 8X anisotropic filtering.

FarCry v1.3 Benchmark Note:All of the cards were tested with every one of the in-game graphical options set to their maximum values. The ATi powered cards were tested using the pixel shader 2.0b code path, but the GeForce 6800 GT was tested using the pixel shader 3.0 path. High Dynamic range lighting was disabled, but geometry instancing and normal map compression were enabled. These configurations give NVIDIA's and ATi's video cards the ability to run the FarCry with the best image quality, while taking advantage of each architecture's strengths.

Without using any anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering, the GeForce 6800 GT nudged just slightly ahead of the RX800 when tested at a resolution of 1024x768. However, with 4X AA and 8X anisotropic filtering enabled at 1024x768, and in both test configurations at 1600x1200, the X800 XTs were the better performers in our custom FarCry benchmark.

Tags: MSI, Radeon, PC, Pre, MS, PCI Express, XP, pci, express, XT, 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