Testbed and Methods

To test the performance of ATI Radeon HD 2000 and Nvidia GeForce 8 graphics card families in DirectX 10 applications we assembled the following standard test platform:

• Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor (3.0GHz, FSB 1333MHz x 9);
• DFI LanParty ICFX 3200 mainboard (ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 for Intel, ATI RD600);
• Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C5 (2x1GB, 1066MHz, 5-5-5-15, 2T);
• Maxtor MaXLine III 7B250S0 HDD (250GB, Serial ATA-150, 16MB buffer);
• Enermax Galaxy DXX EGX1000EWL 1000W power supply;
• Samsung 244T monitor (24", 1920x1200@60Hz max display resolution);
• Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit;
• Nvidia ForceWare 158.24;
• ATI Catalyst Beta 8.38.9.1-rc2_48912.

Since we believe that the use of texture filtering optimizations is not justified in this case, the AMD and Nvidia graphics card drivers were set up to provide the highest possible quality of tri-linear and anisotropic texture filtering. We have also enabled transparent texture filtering to achieve best image quality by selecting Transparency antialiasing in multisampling mode. As a result, our settings looked as follows:

• Texture Filtering: High quality
• Vertical sync: Off
• Trilinear optimization: Off
• Anisotropic optimization: Off
• Anisotropic sample optimization: Off
• Gamma correct antialiasing: On
• Transparency antialiasing: On (multi-sampling)
• Other settings: by default

Although the new DirectX 10 API should first of all improve the image quality, we decided to test all graphics cards in several image quality modes with or without FSAA depending on the type of the graphics accelerator and its features. The games configuration files weren’t modified in any way. We enabled all options from the game’s menu. If this was not possible, we forced them using the appropriate ATI Catalyst and Nvidia ForceWare driver settings.

We performed tests in 1280x1024/960, 1600x1200 and 1920x1200 resolutions with enabled anisotropic filtering, except combinations of some graphics cards, resolutions and/or modes which caused problems.

The list below shows the three test modes for the games we used:

Call of Juarez

Mode 1:

• Shadow map: 2048x2048
• Shadow quality: high
• All other settings at maximum

Mode 2:

• Shadow map: 1024x1024
• Shadow quality: normal
• All other settings at maximum

Mode 3:

• Shadow map: 1024x1024
• Shadow quality: low
• All other settings at maximum

Company of Heroes

Mode 1: 

• DirectX 10 renderer
• All settings at maximum

Mode 2:

• DirectX 10 renderer
• All settings at high or medium

Mode 3:

• DirectX 10 renderer
• Model quality set at high
• All settings low of off

Lost Planet

Mode 1:

• All settings at high

Mode 2:

• All settings at high and/or medium (where possible)
• HDR set at high

Mode 3:

• All settings at low
• HDR set at high