X-bit labs

Two Diamonds: ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT 1GB CrossFire Review (page 9)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko, Anton Shilov

[ 09/11/2007 | 10:13 AM ]

Call of Juarez

Besides the full version of Call of Juarez we used a DirectX 10 test based on the game.

It’s a victory for AMD once again! Moreover, the Radeon HD 2900 XT 1GB CrossFire is the only solution that is capable of ensuring a really high speed in Call of Juarez. And again, one such card is not much faster than a Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB. It means that purchasing two rather inexpensive Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB cards is not only a worthy alternative to the GeForce 8800 Ultra, but also the only means to ensure comfortable gaming conditions at a resolution of 2560x1600 pixels – and for a reasonable price, by the way!

A GeForce 8800 Ultra SLI tandem might have shown even better results but SLI technology is still not supported normally in Windows Vista as yet and it’s uncertain when this problem will be solved.

Call of Juarez DirectX 10

The image quality in Call of Juarez DirectX 10 Benchmark is considerably higher than in the original game. The more realistic lighting and shadowing model catches the eye in particular. Also notable is the use of complex special effects like parallax occlusion mapping, which make many materials in the game look much better than before.

These beauties are accompanied with a tremendous performance hit, though. The final version of Call of Juarez DirectX 10 may be better in this respect, but so far none of the single graphics cards can ensure an average frame rate of at least 30-35fps in it. The best result is turned in by the GeForce 8800 Ultra, probably due to its 32 texture-mapping units and 24 raster operators.

CrossFire technology doesn’t do any good here. It even provokes a performance hit at a resolution of 1280x1024. This problem will probably be solved in the final version of the game. Display resolutions higher than 1920x1200 should also be supported, although they don’t make much sense considering the low performance of today’s DirectX 10 compatible solutions.