Performance-Mainstream Class

Two graphics cards stand out in the Performance-Mainstream class. They are the well-known AMD Radeon X1900 XT and the recently announced Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB supporting DirectX 10, which makes it the best solution from the long-tern use prospective. It is these two that are competing for the title of the best product in their category only in the today’s games (because in DirectX 10 games ATI’s solution will hardly be able to keep up). It may seem strange, but it is not the Nvidia solution that wins here. We should explain it for each particular resolution, though.

Since we benchmarked graphics cards of this class in the eye candy mode (in games that support FSAA), the resolution of 1280x1024 pixels is the most important one. In this resolution the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB is superior over the Radeon X1900 XT in three games out of seven, namely in Battlefield 2142 , Call of Juarez and Supreme Commander . Yet in the first and last case the Radeon X1900 XT actually provides the same high level of comfort whereas Call of Juarez shows visual artifacts when launched on a GeForce 8 series card. Added that Splinter Cell: Double Agent does not start up on this graphics card at all, we can’t really say that the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB is preferable to the Radeon X1900 XT.

Comparing the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB with the GeForce 7950 GT or the Radeon X1950 Pro, we again see it being superior in Battlefield 2142 and Supreme Commander only. And it is only in the latter game that the two mentioned cards have serious problems with performance. In the other cases these graphics cards match each other notwithstanding the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB’s 320-bit memory access, 96 unified shader processors, 24 TMUs and 20 ROPs.

The tests of Call of Juarez and Neverwinter Nights 2 show that the Radeon X1950 Pro suffers from low fill rate. Although its graphics core is 25MHz faster than the GeForce 7950 GT core, it has half the amount of texture-mapping units. This is not the graphics card’s fault, though. We guess the game developers just used texture sampling too excessively, just like in the popular shooter Serious Sam 2 . Or perhaps they utilized some specific features of the GeForce 7 architecture. The AMD card performs quite successfully in other games, no less advanced technically.

The resolution of 1600x1200 pixels is too heavy for graphics cards like Radeon X1950 Pro and GeForce 7950 GT when it comes to modern games. They can provide an average speed of 40-45fps at best. The GeForce 7950 GT looks somewhat better than its opponents in this resolution. As for the leaders, the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB is still superior over the Radeon X1900 XT in three games, and its advantage in Battlefield 2142 is not as impressive as it is in 1280x1024 – the Nvidia solution seems to feel a lack of graphics memory. Considering the problems of the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB with image quality in Call of Juarez and that it cannot launch Splinter Cell: Double Agent at all, we should name the Radeon X1900 XT the winner of this round, too.

The numbers we’ve got in the last and heaviest round have little practical value because Performance-Mainstream graphics cards cannot ensure acceptably high speeds in this mode. Anyway, the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB is on the losing side. It is ahead of the Radeon X1900 XT in only two games now, and in one of these games, Call of Juarez , it shows image artifacts (shadows flickering). The Company of Heroes test produced astonishing results: the Nvidia card, being far superior to the Radeon X1950 Pro in characteristics, proved to be slower than the Radeon! It indicates that the driver still needs to be improved, because there is no way we could explain how the graphics card with 320MB onboard managed to run twice as fast as the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB.

In the bottom segment you choice is between the Radeon X1950 Pro and the GeForce 7950 GT. Although these graphics cards have similar results, the Nvidia solution is preferable due to its higher performance in Call of Juarez and Neverwinter Nights 2 . On the other hand, the Radeon X1950 Pro ensures higher quality of anisotropic filtering.

The Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS stands aloof from the others in this category. It cannot ensure comfortable gaming conditions in modern games due to its low GPU clock rate. That’s why this graphics card should rather belong to the Mainstream class where it would be superior to graphics cards with a 128-bit memory bus.