Performance in Third Person 3D Shooters

Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow

ATI’s and NVIDIA’s solutions are not under the same conditions here. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory has two rendering modes, Shader Model 1.1 and 3.0, the latter ensuring a much higher graphics quality. The game doesn’t support any in-between modes like the widely accepted Shader Model 2.0.

We made an exception from our rules for this game. That is, we didn’t select the same game settings for all the participating graphics cards, but benchmarked the GeForce 6800 Ultra and GT in the SM 3.0 mode, while the RADEONs were tested in the SM 1.1 mode. That’s why the PowerColor X850 XT Platinum Edition AGP is so fast here – it just works in a favourable environment. The GeForce6 cards, on the contrary, work with complex version 3.0 pixel shaders to give you more realism.

We don’t publish the results of the “eye candy” mode since full-screen antialiasing is not supported with Shader Model 3.0. But we can say that the PowerColor X850 XT Platinum Edition AGP makes resolutions up to 1280x1024 comfortably playable in this mode.

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

The GeForce 6800 Ultra is ahead of the PowerColor X850 XT Platinum Edition in the lowest resolution, but they match each other in higher resolutions. Overclocking gives a 10% speed boost to the PowerColor.