ATI's X1000 Series: Extended Performance Testing
by Derek Wilson on October 7, 2005 10:15 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Everquest II Performance
If we had to choose a game that has the potential to stress the GPU more than anything else, it would be Everquest 2. The Extreme Quality mode is currently not worth testing as no one has a system capable of running the game at that mode smoothly enough. Very High Quality mode (which we run in our tests) is demanding enough as it is. The cut-off in playability with this game is also much lower than an FPS style game; it isn't until dropping below 20 frames per second that playability starts to degrade. We were unable to enable AA here, so we will have to settle for just looking at performance with everything else cranked up.
At the high end, it looks like we are limited to near 50 frames per second. Our high end cards are all crowded together at 1280x960, but increasing resolution serves to separate them pretty well. The 7800 series parts maintain a lead over the X1800 cards with which they compete. The 6800 GT and X850 XT do a good job of keeping up with the X1800 XL for the tests we ran.
While the X1600 XT does a good job of performing at X800 levels and staying playable up to 1600x1200, it does not come close to performing near the 6800 GT. X1300 Pro users will have to stick with 1024x768 for playability, but those with 1280x1024 flat panels will probably just want to sacrifice some visual effects.
If we had to choose a game that has the potential to stress the GPU more than anything else, it would be Everquest 2. The Extreme Quality mode is currently not worth testing as no one has a system capable of running the game at that mode smoothly enough. Very High Quality mode (which we run in our tests) is demanding enough as it is. The cut-off in playability with this game is also much lower than an FPS style game; it isn't until dropping below 20 frames per second that playability starts to degrade. We were unable to enable AA here, so we will have to settle for just looking at performance with everything else cranked up.
At the high end, it looks like we are limited to near 50 frames per second. Our high end cards are all crowded together at 1280x960, but increasing resolution serves to separate them pretty well. The 7800 series parts maintain a lead over the X1800 cards with which they compete. The 6800 GT and X850 XT do a good job of keeping up with the X1800 XL for the tests we ran.
While the X1600 XT does a good job of performing at X800 levels and staying playable up to 1600x1200, it does not come close to performing near the 6800 GT. X1300 Pro users will have to stick with 1024x768 for playability, but those with 1280x1024 flat panels will probably just want to sacrifice some visual effects.
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tfranzese - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
These points were brought up about the first article too. It's a big improvement, I agree, but it's still not to the level that this site was founded on.DerekWilson - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
We already commented on the FEAR Demo -- we won't test a game that doesn't show shipping performance characteristics. We are working on getting our hands on a prerelease copy of the shipping game for testing.We have had black and white 2 in house since it became available at best buy (as today is the official US launch, we got it a couple days early). We just haven't had enough time to finalize tests for it.
We will look into the recently released call of duty 2 demo among others. I agree that we could have done things better, and hopefully our coming follow up will hit all the points people want covered.
If you have any other suggestions, please let us know -- we will try our best to include them.
PrinceGaz - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
As for other suggestions, how about some games other than FPS or FPS-view (EQ2) style games? A driving game like NFS:U2 or colin McRae Rally 2005 would be an excellent addition. Then you should have some sort of flight/space-sim, like maybe X2. And a roleplaying game that isn't viewed from a first-person perspective. By including games that have a totally different style of graphics, you'll get a better idea of how well the card performs. X2 for instance would require totally different graphics performance than Half-Life 2.I know some of the games I've mentioned don't have a benchmarking mode, but use FRAPS to get the average framerate. And the minimum framerate. In fact the minimum framerate is more important than the average so you should include it as a matter of course in *all* tests, even to the point of dropping the average framerate if you don't have space. No one is too bothered if the average framerate while playing is 45 or 50fps while playing a game, but the difference between minimum framerates of 20 and 25fps would definitely be noticeable. I'm sure others will agree.
This (and many other) site seems to think FPS games are all people play, but a lot of us play games from all genres, so including them would be useful.
coldpower27 - Saturday, October 8, 2005 - link
I support the use of X2: The Threat as a benchmark, I also support the use of shipping games to compare numbers, so Anandtech should benchmark Black & White 2 as it is now available, plus Call of Duty 2 & Fear when they become available.bob661 - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
Even though I found the original article very informative (I guess I can read well), this one was much better. The bar graphs don't show how the performance goes down as you raise the resolution and turn on the eye candy.zmanww - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
what no Overclocking?come on I want to see that this baby can really do.
Peldor - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
I don't think the usual overclocking utilities are working for the X1x00 cards yet.DerekWilson - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
this is true -- we wanted to test slower versions and couldn't because of this.also reference board overclocking isn't always the best indication of retail board performance.
Lonyo - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
Would be nice to see some analysis of ATi's SM3 implimentation, with SM2 vs SM3 benchmarks in the games which do support SM2 and SM3 paths.tfranzese - Friday, October 7, 2005 - link
From the article:I think the analysis and the conclusions up to this point have been far short sighted. Seems that the games that are using SM3.0 are taking considerable advantage of the new architecture. The Tech Report, Hexus and others were able to show that much.