X-bit labs

ATI's 0.11 Micron Chip on the Run: ATI RADEON X800 XL Review (page 6)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin

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

Unreal Tournament 2004

The new graphics card performs excellently in Unreal Tournament 2004, although is behind the RADEON X800 XT – both are considerably faster than the GeForce 6800 GT. The problem with the current (66.93) version of ForceWare on the PCI Express platform is that the speed ceiling is set much lower for NVIDIA’s cards than for ATI’s. We should also note the fact that the GeForce 6800 boasts a higher performance on the VIA K8T800 PRO platform than its ATI rivals and its senior, the 6800 GT model, on the NVIDIA nForce4 SLI platform with the same processor.

There’s a smaller gap between the RADEON X800 XT and XL in the “eye candy” mode. Why? Our demo record on this level is full of panoramic views of the battlefield, so the texture load is high. The memory of both RADEONs X800 works at the same frequency, so there’s a negligible difference between these two solutions here.

It’s generally the same on the Metallurgy level: the speed of the RADEON X800 XL nearly equals that of the RADEON X700 XT, save for 1600x1200 resolution where the latter is impeded by its 128-bit memory bus.

Like on the Torlan map, there’s a minimal or no difference at all between the RADEON X800 XL and X800 XT in the “eye candy” mode. The GeForce 6800 GT behaves more correctly on this level and delivers the speed of the RADEON X800 XL.