Performance in Gaming Tests: Semi-Synthetic Benchmarks

Aquamark3

This test is rather remote from today’s gaming realities and its results are only interesting from a purely theoretical point of view. We can note once more that the GeForce 7 architecture is superbly adapted for applications that do not require a high pixel shader performance. The GeForce 7900 GTX is faster than the Radeon X1900 XTX in all resolutions with turned-on 4x FSAA, even though the gap isn’t bigger than 8-10%.

As for the harder antialiasing modes, those that you may only venture to enable on a dual-chip configuration, the GeForce 7900 GTX SLI is losing its ground steadily in high resolutions of the 8x FSAA mode and then in the 14x/16x FSAA mode where there’s a 60% gap between the two graphics subsystems. The GeForce 7900 is not to be blamed for this since 16x SLI AA is much harder on the graphics memory than 14x Super AA.