X-bit labs

ATI RADEON X800 XL 512MB Graphics Card Review. 512MB: Today’s Need or Reserve for the Future? (page 10)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Anton Shilov

[ 05/05/2005 | 02:10 PM ]

Unreal Tournament 2004

The graphics cards all hit at the speed ceiling imposed by the central processor of the system.

The same thing happens in the “4x FSAA plus 16x AF” mode.

The participating cards from NVIDIA slow down suddenly in the extreme quality mode due to the resource-consuming 8xS FSAA algorithm, but maintain playability even in 1280x1024. The RADEON X800 XL 512MB has a certain advantage in speed, but it’s no more than 2.6fps, absolute frame rates being about 65-70fps.

The results on another level, Metallurgy, also suggest that Unreal Tournament 2004 is an easy task for top-end graphics cards of today. The GeForce 6800 Ultra/GT cards are ahead of the RADEON X850/800 models in high resolutions, though.

The RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition wins the high resolutions of the “eye candy” mode, while the two versions of the RADEON X800 XL have the same results in all the resolutions. That is, 512 megabytes of graphics memory don’t give any bonuses to the new card in this game, either.

We switch to 6x/8xS FSAA mode to see the RADEON X800 XL 512MB being just 2fps ahead of its 256MB version. ATI’s cards managed to make even 1600x1200 resolution comfortably playable while the speed of the GeForce 6800 Ultra/GT dropped below the critical mark of 40fps.