X-bit labs

Red Revenge: ATI Radeon X1950 XTX Graphics Card Review (page 16)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 08/25/2006 | 09:27 AM ]

Performance in Third-Person 3D Shooters 

Hitman: Blood Money

The 20% performance boost lifts the Radeon X1950 XTX up to the level of the GeForce 7900 GTX, but its minimum speed is still lower than the Nvidia card’s. This is probably due to the fewer TMUs (high texturing speed helps render complex scenes faster) or to the game engine’s specifics.

Anyway, you don’t have a comfortable speed on any single-chip graphics card in resolutions above 1280x1024 if you enable FSAA, even considering that the comfortable speed bar is lower for third-person shooters than for first-person ones.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

The use of the new high-performance memory type has a positive effect on the performance of the Radeon X1950 XTX in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. It is about 15% behind the GeForce 7950 GX2 in 1280x1024 and 10% behind in the higher resolutions. That’s an excellent result considering the lower price and the better noise characteristics of the new Radeon.

Tomb Raider: Legend

The super-fast GDDR4 memory on board the Radeon X1950 XTX is of little use in the special effects rich Tomb Raider: Legend, although we launched the game in the Next Generation Content mode in which Shader Model 3.0 capabilities are employed. The GeForce 7900 GTX is just a little faster than the two flagship Radeons and, like them, allows playing in resolutions no higher than 1280x1024 when full-screen antialiasing is enabled.