Performance in Gaming Tests: First-Person 3D Shooters

Battlefield 2

Battlefield 2 still does not support extreme levels of full-screen antialiasing, so we limited ourselves to the 4x FSAA + 16x AF mode.

The GeForce 7900 GTX is as fast as the Radeon X1900 XTX in the two lower resolutions, but loses in the resolution of 1600x1200 – the less advanced memory controller is to blame, we think. It is also a mere 5fps ahead of the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 in 1600x1200, which points at the memory subsystem performance as the main bottleneck in this resolution because the gap is larger in the lower display modes.

The SLI configuration with two GeForce 7900 GTX is, on the contrary, confidently ahead in 1600x1200, providing an average frame rate of about 145fps whereas the Radeon X1900 XT CrossFire yields 130fps. The CrossFire system probably has worse performance scalability than Nvidia’s SLI here.

The Chronicles of Riddick

The game engine uses OpenGL and stencil shadows, so the GeForce 7900 GTX can enjoy a solid advantage of 20% over the Radeon X1900 XTX across all the resolutions. Two such graphics cards can get you as high as 120+ fps in 1600x1200, a feat that the Radeon X1900 XT CrossFire cannot repeat.

As for extreme FSAA modes, the GeForce 7900 GTX SLI allows playing with turned-on 8x SLI AA in any resolution, but the higher-quality 16x SLI AA is too difficult even for this platform as it yields a comfortable frame rate in 1024x768 only. The Radeon X1900 XT CrossFire seems much faster than the GeForce 7900 GTX SLI in that case, but you should be aware that 14x Super AA theoretically produces a lower-quality picture than 16x SLI AA with its honest super-sampling.