X-bit labs

ATI RADEON X700 XT: Gaming Performance Preview

Category: Video

by Anton Shilov , Alexey Stepin

[ 09/21/2004 | 07:31 AM ]

ATI Technologies’ new mainstream fighter – RADEON X700 XT – is here to conquer NVIDIA’s GeForce 6600 GT product with the help of turbo-charged micro-architecture as well as new CATALYST AI set of performance boosters. Let’s find out ATI’s status in the mainstream with the help of some gaming and synthetic benchmarks.

Table of contents:

• Introduction
  
• CATALYST AI: Doping Your RADEON
  
• New Optimizations, New Speeds
  
• Optimizations: Industry Trends
  
• Testbed and Methods
  
• First-Person 3D Shooters
  
• Call of Duty
  
• Doom III
  
• Unreal Tournament 2004
  
• Halo: Combat Evolved
  
• Far Cry
  
• Painkiller
  
• Third-Person 3D Shooters
  
• Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
  
• Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness
  
• Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow
  
• Semi-synthetic Benchmarks
  
• Aquamark 3
  
• Synthetic Benchmarks
  
• 3DMark03
  
• Conclusion
  
• ATI RADEON X700 GPU: What You Need to Know
  
• ATI RADEON X700 XT vs. NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT: Real Fight is Still Ahead
  

Introduction

In our first review of the new family of mainstream graphics processors from ATI Technologies we tried to give you an as detailed as possible report on the architectural specifics and capabilities of the RADEON X700 GPU and also tested it in synthetic benchmarks.

The theoretical tests exposed certain weaknesses about the newcomer, related to its texturing units: at multi-texturing, at rendering many complex textures and at processing pixel shaders that extensively use textures, the X700 is considerably slower than its main rival, the GeForce 6600 GT. On the other hand, it excellently handles pixel shaders abounding in complex mathematical computations and leaves the competitor far behind in vertex shader performance, having six vertex processors against the GeForce 6600 GT’s three. Simply put, the RADEON X700 XT and the GeForce 6600 GT both inherited all the strong and weak sides of their progenitors, the R420 and NV40 architectures, respectively.

Theory is important, but the true potential and usefulness of the product can only be revealed through real-life trials, i.e. gaming applications. So, this second review of the ATI RADEON X700 is all about games!