X-bit labs

ATI RADEON X800 XL 512MB Graphics Card Review. 512MB: Today’s Need or Reserve for the Future? (page 25)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Anton Shilov

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

Futuremark 3DMark05

Although the new 3DMark is much more complex than the older version, it doesn’t seem to appreciate the availability of 512MB of graphics memory, either. Is it true for all the tests and resolutions? Let’s check it up.

Game 1

The first scene of the suite is a typical 3D shooter. It’s difficult in terms of graphics quality, but the extra memory on board the new RADEON X800 XL gives it no speed bonuses.

Our turning on FSAA plus aniso-filtering doesn’t change anything. The RADEON X800 XL 512MB is still slower than the top-end RADEONs with only 256 megabytes of memory.

The performance gain from the additional memory is at last visible at 6x FSAA, but it amounts to 5% at best. Thus, the RADEON X800 XL 512MB still cannot challenge the RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition.

Game 2

The distinctive features of the second test are the dynamically generated vegetation and numerous shadows. The texture load is high here, but we are not surprised anymore to see the two RADEON X800 XL models have identical results.

Both versions of the RADEON X800 XL are far behind the RADEON X850 XT/XT Platinum Edition in the “eye candy” mode (4x FSAA + 16x AF).

Well, there’s no visible difference even with the maximum possible level of antialiasing on. On second thought, the gap of 0.2fps may be considered big enough because the absolute frame rates are no more than 10-13fps here.

Game 3

The gist of the third test is in its pixel shaders that are extremely complex both mathematically and texturally, and we might have expected some gain from more memory here, but the results refute this supposition.

The situation remains the same in the “eye candy” mode (4x FSAA and 16x AF): the RADEON X800 XL 512MB is still behind the RADEON X850 XT/XT Platinum Edition.

Even the use of the combination of 6x FSAA, anisotropic filtering and high resolutions doesn’t bring anything new to us. It’s probably the GPU speed rather than the memory amount that plays the crucial role in this test. Thus, the lack of difference in performance of the 512MB and 256MB versions of the RADEON X800 XL is confirmed in 3DMark05, too.