X-bit labs

GTX on Bargain: MSI GeForce NX8800GT-T2D512E-OC Review (page 8)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 12/13/2007 | 04:23 PM ]

Crysis

Crytek maintains its reputation of a developer of heavy applications. Far Cry was a burden for the best graphics cards at the time of its release, and Crysis is such for the best graphics cards of 2007.

The game features exquisite visuals but its Very High level of detail is hardly really available for normal play even for people who have two Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra in SLI mode. Notwithstanding the disabled FSAA, the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT and GTX cannot provide more than 20fps at 1280x1024, and overclocking doesn’t help here at all. Theoretically, the results of the MSI card are close to those of the GeForce 8800 GTX, except for 1920x1200, but this information has no practical value for the gamer. The current generation of graphics cards only allows to play Crysis at the High or lower level of detail.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

The frame rate is fixed at 30fps in this game as this is the rate at which the physical model is being updated at the server. Thus, this 30fps speed is the required minimum for playing the game.

The overclocked versions of GeForce 8800 GT are just as fast as the GeForce 8800 GTX at a resolution of 1280x1024 but the head of the GeForce 8 series doesn’t lose as much speed as the G92-based products at the higher resolutions. The memory bandwidth is a performance-affecting factor in this game, probably due to MegaTexture technology (for details see our article called Unreal Battlefield: Enemy Territory Quake Wars Performance Preview). The results of the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB do not support this supposition but we can recall that ATI’s support for OpenGL has never been perfect. Insufficiently optimized drivers may be the explanation of the Radeon’s results as well.