X-bit labs

Love at First Touch: ATI Radeon Xpress 3200 Review (page 26)

Category: Chipsets

by Alexey Stepin , Anton Shilov

[ 03/27/2006 | 02:34 PM ]

Futuremark 3DMark06

3DMark06 agrees with 3DMark05: the CrossFire Xpress 3200 enjoys a slender lead in the first SM2.0 graphics test already.

The second test is more indifferent towards the number of PCI Express lanes per each graphical slot: the new platform offers a minor speed bonus in the Super AA modes only.

Larger amounts of data are transferred on the PCI Express bus in the first SM3.0/HDR graphics test than in the SM2.0 tests, so the CrossFire Xpress 3200 looks even better than the older chipset, although the gap is still a mere 1-2fps.

The same can be seen in the second SM3.0/HDR test, excepting 1280x1024 resolution in the 4x FSAA + 16x AF mode where the results of both the platforms coincide to 0.1fps.

So, the 3DMark suites have shown that it is really useful to have two complete PCI Express x16 slots in the system and that the ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 is really faster than the Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire Edition, but its advantage is very small, just like in a majority of real games.