X-bit labs

PowerColor Radeon X1800 GTO Graphics Card: the Best in Its Class? (page 19)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin

[ 06/01/2006 | 12:24 AM ]

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

We didn’t test this game with enabled FSAA because HDR is disabled on Nvidia’s GeForce cards in this case, making the game much less appealing visually. Besides that, HDR is incompatible with the Bloom effect. TES IV: Oblivion doesn’t offer integrated benchmarking options, so we have to use Fraps and test manually. The results may be somewhat inaccurate as a consequence.

In dungeons and other closed environments it is important for the graphics card to quickly process pixel shaders, lighting and shadows. However, the PowerColor X1800 GTO is 15% to 25% slower than the GeForce 7600 GT. 500MHz is probably not enough to reveal the potential of the R520 chip. This is also indicated by the results of the Radeon X1800 XL which is much slower than the GeForce 7600 GT in 1280x1024.

As for playability, you can’t play TES IV: Oblivion on mainstream graphics cards like PowerColor X1800 GTO or GeForce 7600 GT if you use HDR and highest graphics quality settings. The average performance is too low even in closed scenes and is going to plummet as soon as you go out in the open.

The PowerColor X1800 GTO is better in open game scenes as the 128-bit memory bus of the GeForce 7600 GT cannot handle the much higher memory load even without full-screen antialiasing. The average speed if the $199-249 cards is no higher than 30fps. It means you have to lower the level of detail or disable HDR to achieve just a bare minimum of comfort in Oblivion .