Performance in Third-Person 3D Shooters

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

This game is pretty rich in textures and not very complex pixel shaders, which are used to create different visual effects, such as fog, halos, etc.

RADEON X1800 XT doesn’t have any opportunity to reveal its remarkable features that is why it is just a little bit ahead of the GeForce 7800 GTX. Note that despite that both graphics cards show similar minimal performance level.

In resolutions above 1024x768 RADEON X1800 XL fails to outperform the previous generation solution, namely RADEON X850 XT PE, not to mention GeForce 7800 GT. So, I would say that the performance of ATI newcomers in Prince of Persia: Warrior Within isn’t really that impressive.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

This shooter is based on the modified Unreal engine. After some additional improvements and changes, the game started to support normal maps, per-pixel lighting and other contemporary technologies. It also supports Shader Model 3.0.

RADEON X1800 XT is not that much faster than GeForce 7800 GTX here, however ATI’s solution boasts much greater “safety factor”, due to significantly higher minimum fps rate. The younger model, RADEON X1800 XL, also competes with GeForce 7800 GTX quite successfully. As for RADEON X850 XT PE, it works in lighter conditions, because it doesn’t support Shader Model 3.0 – this is exactly why its results are so high in this test.

In eye candy mode RADEON X1800 solutions dash forward. RADEON X1800 XL owes this success to its efficient memory controller, and RADEON X1800 XT – to the memory controller, of course, and to incredibly high working frequencies.