X-bit labs

PowerColor X1950 Pro SCS3 Graphics Card: The Big and The Silent (page 9)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin

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

Half-Life 2: Episode One

As opposed to F.E.A.R., the PowerColor X1950 Pro SCS3 doesn’t have a great advantage over the GeForce 8600 GTS, yet there is no lag, either. Both cards are fast enough for you to play in 1600x1200 with enabled 4x FSAA whereas the GeForce 7950 GT and Radeon X1900 XT with powerful texture-mapping resources can deliver 55-60fps at a resolution of 1920x1200 pixels.

Prey

Nvidia’s solutions don’t seem to have an advantage in OpenGL-based games as they used to. The PowerColor is considerably faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS in Prey and the Radeon X1900 XT is ahead of the GeForce 7950 GT. On the other hand, the PowerColor X1950 Pro SCS3 delivers an average 40fps at best even in the lowest of the display resolutions we use.

Theoretically, you can play at that speed, but practice suggests that you want to have an average frame rate of 60fps and higher to play a first-person shooter with full comfort. Thus, owners of the card models included into this review, except for the Radeon X1900 XT, may want to disable FSAA or switch to lower resolutions or reduce the level of detail.