X-bit labs

ATI Introduces DirectX 9 and PCI Express to Value Graphics Market: PowerColor X300SE Graphics Card Review (page 7)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin

[ 10/20/2004 | 04:34 PM ]

Unreal Tournament 2004

The popular online shooter Unreal Tournament 2004 may be called simple due to the specifics of its engine. Operating with a complex geometry and an abundance of high-res textures, the engine does not use pixel shaders and is friendly towards even the simplest of modern graphics cards. We say “modern” deliberately as the PowerColor evidently profits by its advanced architecture compared to the one the RADEON 9200 is based on. On the other hand, it is the same simplicity of the game engine that increases the influence of the 64-bit memory bus on the results of the PowerColor X300 SE both in the pure speed and the eye candy modes.

It is the same on the Metallurgy level: the architectural specifics – particularly, its four vertex processors clocked at 325MHz – help the X300 SE a lot here in its race with the RADEON 9200. The negative effect of the narrow memory bus is felt here, too.

Halo: Combat Evolved

Halo depends heavily on the speed of pixel shaders. The width of the memory bus doesn’t greatly impede the PowerColor here while the GPU overclocking brings in a substantial performance gain, equating the X300 SE to the X300. We don’t publish RADEON 9200’s results here since this GPU doesn’t support DirectX 9 and can only run version 1.4 pixel shaders. The DirectX 8.1 mode of Halo produces a picture of quite another image quality, with many special effects missing. So, comparing the RADEON 9200 to the other cards would be incorrect. That’s why we don’t publish the results of this card in the rest of games that use version 2.0 pixel shaders, either.