X-bit labs

ATI RADEON X1800 XT and XL Performance: Crushing NVIDIA's 7800? (page 21)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko, Anton Shilov

[ 10/06/2005 | 08:23 PM ]

Futuremark 3DMark05 build 120

3DMark05 is better balanced than 3DMark03: there are no tests favoring ATI or NVIDIA architecture here. Besides, this benchmarking set is more up-to-date from the technology standpoint as it uses a lot of complex pixel and vertex shaders and other contemporary features. Since RADEON X1000 architecture was designed to satisfy the today’s needs as well as to meet the standards of tomorrow, both RADEON X1800 models perform very well in 3DMark05. RADEON X1800 XT almost hits the 9000 point bar, while RADEON X1800 XL almost reaches the 7000 point, which is a today’s record for single ultra high-end and high-end graphics cards working at their nominal speeds. Now let’s find out what determined this great victory of RADEON X1800 in 3DMark05.

The “shooter” test contains a scene typical of any science fiction 3D shooter game. There are dynamic shadows generated with high resolution depth maps (2048x2048). The GPU is mostly loaded by numerous soldier models and complex lighting: there are 8 light sources.

RADEON X1800 shows its architectural advantages right away: the top model provides pretty acceptable fps rate even in 1024x768 resolution with enabled FSAA and anisotropic filtering. The younger model also performs quite well keeping up with GeForce 7800 GT in all modes and resolutions.