Sapphire Radeon X800 XT - PCI Express

Head-to-Head Performance With Tomb Raider: AOD The Anti-Greatest!

Tomb Raider: AOD

Although Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness won't be winning any "Game of the Year" awards, it does employ some fairly interesting pixel shader 2.0 effects, such as depth of field. We've recorded a custom demo of Lara jogging through an indoor garden area in the "Prague3" map. When using the Pixel Shader 2.0 code path, this area of the game utilizes a DOF (depth of field) blurring effect to enhance the sense of depth and vastness. We ran our custom demo at a resolution of 1,024 x 768 and then again at 1,600 x 1,200, using both the Pixel Shader 1.4 and 2.0 code paths (with and without 4x anti-aliasing enabled in the PS 2.0 tests).

The Sapphire X800 XT dominated the GeForce 6800 GT in every test configuration, but one in our custom Tomb Raider benchmark.  At 1024x768, when using the pixel shader 2.0 code path, the GeForce 6800 GT was able to muster a 2 frame per second margin of victory.  In every other configuration though, the X800 XTs outperformed the 6800 GT by significant margins.  At 1600x1200 using the PS 2.0 path with 4X AA enabled, for example, the Sapphire X800 XT outpaced the 6800 GT by a little more than 8 frames per second, or approximately 20%.