X-bit labs

Seven Friends of a Gamer: GPUs vs. Games Spring 2007 (page 12)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko, Anton Shilov

[ 03/30/2007 | 12:55 PM ]

Conclusion

Having benchmarked 11 games in 7 games we can now give you some recommendations on upgrading your gaming platform. We put the test data into diagrams for easier comparison so that you could see what solution would be most optimal for your particular needs without going over the detailed performance charts again.

Premium/High-End Class

Without any doubt the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS currently deliver the highest possible performance among top-end graphics solutions. These are in fact the only representatives of the Premium class in this review. New solutions from AMD/ATI are yet to appear while Nvidia has been sitting on the technology leader’s throne for quite long already.

The GeForce 8800 GTX has no rivals when it comes to sheer speed. It can often ensure a comfortable frame rate even in 1920x1200 with enabled full-screen antialiasing. Being the only product of its kind, the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX seems to be the best buy in case you’ve got the money and are ready to part with it to purchase the highest performance possible today.

We want to warn you against hasty choices, though. The problem with the new GeForce series is that although it was officially announced about 5 months back, it still has incompatibility issues with some games. We used only 7 games in this review, but two of them had problems on the GeForce 8800 series cards: flickering shadows in Call of Juarez , and Splinter Cell: Double Agent that refused to run at all. You should be aware of this when you are considering a GeForce 8800. You may want to make sure beforehand that the GeForce 8800 GTX or GTS is compatible with your favorite games. Perhaps you should even wait for the arrival of AMD’s graphics cards on the new-generation GPU. You’ll have more choice and the driver for the GeForce 8800 will have got perfected by then.

The ATI Radeon X1950 XTX can still ensure good performance in modern games and, considering the above-mentioned problems with Nvidia’s new series, you don’t have to replace it immediately with a GeForce 8800 GTS. Purchasing a GeForce 8800 GTX, which is far faster than the Radeon, only makes sense if your monitor supports resolutions above 1600x1200. Until the release of AMD’s new series, the Radeon X1950 XTX will be able to satisfy your need for high-quality and fast graphics, although you won’t be able to use the resolution of 1920x1200 with enabled 4x FSAA.

The perspectives of the Nvidia GeForce 7950 GX2 are not so bright. The great potential of this graphics card from Nvidia comes from SLI technology which does not always work as desired and depends entirely on its support by the ForceWare driver. Since Nvidia is now focusing mostly on the GeForce 8 series and Windows Vista operating system, the GeForce 7950 GX2 may be left on its own. As a result, its speed is much lower than expected in a number of new games, namely in Company of Heroes, Splinter Cell: Double Agent and Supreme Commander because only one of its two graphics cores was active. This card enjoys a considerable advantage over the Radeon X1950 XTX in Call of Juarez and is a little ahead of it in Neverwinter Nights 2 . That’s all. It means the owner of a GeForce 7950 GX2 should consider upgrading his graphics card just because he can find himself with only half the card on his hands, roughly equal to the GeForce 7950 GT in terms of speed. The choice is simple here: buy a GeForce 8800 GTS/GTX (but consider the information given above) or wait for the new generation of graphics cards from AMD.