The second test loads mostly the vertex processors. Texturing workload is not that significant, as the action takes place in a night forest and you cannot see far. The test uses realistic light dissipation and dynamic shadows. In this case RADEON X1800 XL starts to get ahead of GeForce 7800 GT because of the higher working frequency of its vertex processors (500MHz against 440MHz by GeForce) and their higher capacity. The performance advantage is not very big: it doesn’t exceed 5-8%. Of course, RADEON X1800 XT is undefeated here: its working frequencies are a way higher than those of GeForce 7800 GTX.

The most complicated benchmark in the entire 3DMark05 package loads any GPU to the maximum. Canyon walls and water surface are generated with the most complex pixel shaders using Shader Model 2.0. For instance, the rock material is created with two color maps, two normal maps and diffuse shading. The water surface is rendered in six passes to ensure its highest realism. Pixel processors are loaded very heavily by the math1ematical calculations as well as texturing tasks. RADEON X1800 solutions win in pure speed mode, although the XL model cannot catch up with GeForce 7800 GT in 1600x1200.

The results in eye candy mode with enabled FSAA demonstrate lower computational power of RADEON X1800 XT compared against GeForce 7800 GTX. As the resolution grows, NVIDIA solution starts dashing forward even though the rival from the new RADEON family boasts higher working frequencies and intellectual memory controller. The performance of RADEON X1800 XL also drops faster in this mode than the performance of GeForce 7800 GT, so that their results level out in 1600x1200.

All in all, the results of the total performance analysis are quite logical: 3DMark05 uses 1024x768 resolution by default, and in this resolution RADEON X1800 XT is the best. However, RADEON X1800 XT may be not that impressive any more in higher resolutions, and sometimes with enabled FSAA, although it will still be faster than GeForce 7800 GTX. The same would be true for RADEON X1800 XL, which wins an indisputable victory over GeForce 7800 GT only in lower resolutions.