X-bit labs

Almost a Champion: ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT Gaming Performance Review (page 7)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko, Anton Shilov

[ 05/24/2007 | 03:39 PM ]

Half-Life 2: Episode One

Not breaking any records, the Radeon HD 2900 XT is anyway competing successfully with the GeForce 8800 GTS. It is 5% slower at a resolution of 1920x1200, though. There can’t be any complaints about overall performance of the new AMD card – it is high enough for comfortable play in every display resolution with 4x FSAA enabled. This is largely due to the painstakingly optimized game engine that has a very moderate appetite for hardware resources as modern video games go.

Prey

Nvidia’s solutions seem to have no superiority in OpenGL games they used to enjoy before. The ex-flagship Radeon X1950 XTX easily maintains the same average speed as the GeForce 8800 GTS whereas the Radeon HD 2900 XT is some 15% ahead of its predecessor and is only inferior to the GeForce 8800 GTX.

At maximum level of detail and with enabled 4x full-screen antialiasing the new solution from AMD allows using resolutions up to 1600x1200 in this game. Its performance is near comfortable at 1920x1200, yet the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX is the only solution to offer the desired 60fps. The Nvidia card is far more expensive than the Radeon HD 2900 XT after all.