X-bit labs

PowerColor X1950 Pro Extreme Graphics Card: Sacred Silence (page 16)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 12/19/2006 | 03:39 PM ]

Performance in Strategies

Age of Empires 3: The War Chiefs

Behaving alike to the Radeon X1950 Pro, the PowerColor X1950 Pro Extreme outperforms the GeForce 7900 GS in two out of three resolutions and loses to it in 1920x1200. There’s little difference between the PowerColor and the reference card from ATI.

Company of Heroes

This game abounds in cutting-edge technologies and special effects, allowing both versions of Radeon X1950 Pro to have a higher average frame rate than that of the GeForce 7900 GS. The Nvidia card provides a higher minimum speed in two out of three resolutions, though. Moreover, it’s clear that you can’t play this game on $199 graphics cards with 4x FSAA due to terrible slowdowns in some scenes. In order to ensure an acceptable level of comfort, you’ll want to give up antialiasing for this game.

Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends

The PowerColor X1950 Pro Extreme enjoys a small advantage over the ordinary Radeon X1950 Pro, but it grows ever smaller in higher resolutions. It is the memory subsystem performance that becomes a crucial factor in FSAA modes and it is almost identical between these two graphics cards.