Call of Duty 2

Using 4x FSAA we again see both the CrossFire platforms delivering the same speeds in the first two resolutions; in 1600x1200 the Radeon X1900 XT CrossFire is slightly ahead of the older platform. Call of Duty 2 just can’t load all the 96 pixel processors of the new multi-GPU config as fully as to conceal the insufficient texture fetch speed.

Having much humbler technical characteristics, the Radeon X1800 XT CrossFire system is not, however, much slower than the new Radeon X1900 XT CrossFire. Both the multi-GPU configurations from ATI Technologies ensure a comfortable speed in resolutions of 1024x768 and lower.

What we’ve just said above can be applied to the results of the Super AA 14x mode, too. The newer CrossFire is a mere 10-11% faster than the older platform in the hardest test mode. This is not enough to yield a playable frame rate in 1600x1200 resolution; like in the previous case, you can play the game comfortably in 1024x768 only.

Note also the extremely low performance of the SLI configuration with two GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB cards. If you are going to assemble one, you should be aware that you will have to reduce the display resolution or disable some special effects to achieve an acceptable game speed when an extreme level of full-screen antialiasing is turned on.

Doom 3

The Radeon X1900 XT CrossFire proves its superiority in 1600x1200 resolution only, yet even then it evidently has a lower efficiency than the Radeon X1800 XT CrossFire. This is likely to be due to insufficient texture fetch speed and/or too low memory bandwidth.

It’s similar in the harder antialiasing modes: the Radeon X1900 XT CrossFire doesn’t have much advantage over the Radeon X1800 XT CrossFire in resolutions lower than 1600x1200, but the performance gain is less than 10fps even in the latter case. That’s not enough to make that resolution playable. It’s the same with SLI AA and the GeForce 7800 GTX SLI, though.

Can the 96 pixel processors make a difference in games that make a wider use of long and complex shaders?