Performance in Strategy Games

Age of Empires 3

The game makes use of Shader Model 3.0 and this explains the failure of the Radeon X1800 XT which has only 16 pixel processors against 24 and 48 in the GeForce 7 and Radeon X1900, respectively. The new flagship product from Nvidia again lacks efficiency when communicating with the graphics memory. It is yet competitive against the GeCube Radeon X1900 XTX in 1024x768, but loses its ground in 1280x1024 and finds itself about 15% behind. The gap is somewhat smaller in the higher resolution, but the GeCube anyway has better minimum and average frame rates. Both these solutions are quite capable of running the game at an acceptable speed in 1600x1200 with enabled full-screen antialiasing and anisotropic filtering.

Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War

Like all games that demand a high scene fill rate and fast processing of stencil shadows, Dawn of War prefers Nvidia’s GeForce 7 cards. Here, the GeCube Radeon X1900 XTX can’t beat even the GeForce 7900 GT, not to mention the GeForce 7900 GTX, in any resolution with turned-on full-screen antialiasing. The average performance of this solution is sufficient to play in any resolution, but the minimum of speed is below 20fps which may have a negative effect on your gaming experience.