X-bit labs

ATI Radeon X1650 XT Graphics Card Review (page 6)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 01/19/2007 | 11:58 AM ]

Performance in First-Person 3D Shooters

Battlefield 2142

The Radeon X1650 XT beats the GeForce 7600 GT in our first test, but can’t match the GeForce 7900 GS that boasts 20 TMUs, 16 ROPs and a 256-bit memory interface. The gap isn’t bigger than 10-13%, though.

It should be noted that the graphics card is fast enough only at 1280x1024 without full-screen antialiasing, and even in this case its average frame rate is lower than the 60 frames per second which you need to play a first-person shooter with comfort.

Call of Duty 2

Although the game employs a new renderer with support for cutting-edge shader-based DirectX 9 effects, its engine is a modified version of the Quake 3 engine. This is perhaps the reason why the AMD cards are so slow: the Radeon X1650 XT is everywhere slower than the GeForce 7600 GT while the Radeon X1950 Pro, having more pixel processors and a higher core frequency, cannot surpass the GeForce 7900 GS.

The game is obviously too demanding for graphics cards like Radeon X1650 XT and GeForce 7600 GT, and you can’t get a comfortable speed from them even by disabling full-screen antialiasing. You’ll probably have to switch to 1024x768 or use lower graphics quality settings.