X-bit labs

ATI's 0.11 Micron Chip on the Run: ATI RADEON X800 XL Review (page 5)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin

[ 03/21/2005 | 09:14 AM ]

Performance in First Person 3D Shooters

Doom III

The ATI RADEON X800 XL is no match for the GeForce 6800 and 6800 GT in Doom III, but that’s normal. We know that NVIDIA’s GeForce6 cards feel better in this game than ATI’s products due to their architectural specifics and to the more perfect OpenGL driver.

Meanwhile, there’s a big performance gap between the RADEON X800 XT and the RADEON X800 XL: the speed in the “pure speed” mode depends mostly on the frequency of the GPU, and it is 100MHz lower with the XL model. The gap amounts to 15% in 1600x1200.

In the “eye candy” mode, i.e. with enabled full-screen antialiasing and anisotropic filtering, the performance of the graphics memory subsystem comes to the fore. The RADEON X800 XT and X800 XL are peers in the respect since they both clock their memory at 500 (1000DDR) MHz. The gap between the RADEON X800 XT and the X800 XL is no more than 10% here.

The GPU load is smaller on the d3dm4 map as there are no monsters on it. That’s why there’s a smaller difference between the two ATI RADEONs than in the previous case. The NVIDIA GeForce 6800 and 6800 GT are still beyond the RADEONs’ reach.

The RADEON X800 XL is the same 10% behind its senior mate in the “eye candy” mode. The GeForce 6800 GT is still superior in all the modes and resolutions, but the GeForce 6800 is behind the RADEON X800 XL.