X-bit labs

PowerColor X1950 Pro SCS3 Graphics Card: The Big and The Silent (page 11)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin

[ 05/23/2007 | 12:10 PM ]

Performance in Third-Person Shooters

Hitman: Blood Money

This is one of the few cases when the PowerColor X1950 Pro SCS3 is inferior to the GeForce 8600 GTS in terms of minimum, if not average, speed. The PowerColor has the lowest minimum of speed among the tested cards and thus doesn’t suit well for playing Hitman: Blood Money. Its average speed is higher than that of the GeForce 8600 GTS in high resolutions, yet this has no practical worth considering their low performance level like 20-25fps.

Tomb Raider: Legend

Regrettably, the PowerColor X1950 Pro SCS3 can’t boast a high minimum of speed in Tomb Raider: Legend, either. Well, the GeForce 8600 GTS, the best card in this parameter, slows down as much as 14fps in complex scenes. Thus, none of the mainstream graphics cards, including the not-so-weak Radeon X1900 XT, suits for playing this game in the Next Generation Content mode at resolutions from 1280x1024 and higher if you enable highest graphics quality settings.

Splinter Cell: Double Agent

We try to get the best quality of graphics from each game, so we chose HDR in favor of FSAA and benchmarked the cards with anisotropic filtering only.

None of the tested cards, except for the Radeon X1900 XT, can yield a comfortable frame rate even in 1280x1024. The GeForce 7950 GT has a modest speed of 25fps with slowdowns to 17fps. Disabling HDR may improve this situation, but the game is going to lose much of its visual appeal. You may choose to switch to 1024x768 instead.