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%.


Marco Chiappetta

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

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