by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko, Anton Shilov
03/30/2007 | 12:55 PM
With this article we’ll continue our tradition of Gaming Week reviews that we started with our Seven Games and One Week: Games vs. GPUs article. It is the Christmas season that is most rich for new game titles and new hardware products, yet life is going on and we’ve already got some new games and new graphics cards in this year. Perhaps it’s time to upgrade?
<%BANNER[article]%>Before making your shopping choice, it’s good to learn beforehand how your new graphics card, game or computer at large is going to behave. It is usually all clear with hardware. Every new product is welcomed on the Web with innumerable reviews that describe its technical aspects and capabilities in minutest detail. It’s different with games. The developers specifies minimum and recommended system requirements for their products, but the former may mean just the configuration the game can barely launch on while the recommended requirements are often understated. You can often find your recommended configuration being unable to run the game at the highest visual quality settings.
For a vast majority of computer systems – if we are talking about modern computers – it is the graphics card that acts as a performance bottleneck, and low speed of a modern game on your computer usually indicates that your graphics card is calling for a replacement. Our Gaming Week reviews are intended to help you make sure if you can still do with your existing graphics card or should upgrade it.
As always, the consumer 3D graphics market offers a large variety of graphics cards that deliver different performance at different prices, from $50 to $600 and even to over $1000 if you take multi-GPU SLI or CrossFire subsystems into account. The latter make up but a small share of the market, though. It is difficult to purchase, install and configure such a subsystem and its compatibility with games may prove to be deficient. This is why we will not talk about such solutions in this review. It is all about single graphics cards of different classes.
We’ll test a total of 11 graphics card models in 7 popular games. Hopefully, this test session will provide you enough information to make up your mind as to what graphics card suits you best.
We tested contemporary graphics cards in a number of latest gaming titles on the following testbed:
The graphics card drivers were set up in such a way as to provide the highest possible quality of texture filtering.
ATI Catalyst:
Nvidia ForceWare:
We selected the highest possible graphics quality level in each game. We didn’t modify the games’ configuration files. Performance was measured with the games’ own tools or, if not available, manually with Fraps utility. We also measured the minimum speed of the cards where possible.
We tested the High-End and Performance-Mainstream solutions only in “eye candy” mode, with enabled anisotropic filtering 16x and full-screen anti-aliasing (FSAA) 4x.
When the user is buying an expensive solution he initially expects to receive comfortable gaming experience with all the image quality enhancing features activated. We ran the tests with disabled FSAA if the games did not support FSAA due to the specifics of their engine or used HDR (FP16).
We enabled FSAA and anisotropic filtering from the game. If this was not possible, we forced them using the appropriate driver settings of ATI Catalyst and Nvidia ForceWare.
Since contemporary games eat up a lot of the video subsystem resources, we tested mainstream graphics cards only in pure performance mode, i.e. with only anisotropic filtering (AF) enabled.
We ran our tests in resolutions standard for our testing methodology: 1280x1024, 1600x1200 and 1920x1200. This time we decided not to run any tests in 2500x1600 resolution, because there are very few monitors that support this resolution and very few gamers have them at their disposal. Moreover, this resolution makes sense only for GeForce 8800 GTX type of graphics accelerators and more powerful multi-GPU systems. Further on, when new-generation AMD/ATI solutions come out, we will most likely devote a special article to this matter.
The following graphics cards participated in our today’s test session:
Premium and High-End Class
Performance-Mainstream Class
Mainstream Class
We selected the following seven contemporary games to evaluate the performance of our 11 testing participants. Some of these games may already be familiar to you:
This sequel to the popular Battlefield series debuted on the list of our benchmarks in our article called 25 Signs of Perfection: Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX in 25 Benchmarks. The player finds himself in the future, right in the heat of a battle between two superpowers – the European Union and the Pan Asian Coalition. The game’s visuals are top quality, yet are not far better than those of Battlefield 2, to tell you the truth. The gameplay will please any fan of sci-fi shooters because the player is offered a variety of exciting ways to pass away the time, particularly piloting and controlling various battle machinery.
The Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX is superior in Battlefield 2142 and is going to remain such until the arrival of a new flagship graphics card from ATI/AMD based on a new-generation GPU. Nvidia’s card provides enough performance for you to play with enabled full-screen antialiasing in any resolution, including 1920x1200 and, perhaps, even 2560x1600 pixels.
The ex-leader GeForce 7950 GX2 is somewhat faster than the ATI Radeon X1950 XTX, but not by much. These graphics cards can both be used to play at a resolution of 1280x1024, 1600x1200, and even 1920x1200 pixels. You should be aware, however, that the ATI Radeon solution offers a much higher quality of anisotropic filtering than graphics cards from Nvidia on G7x GPUs which do not support angle independent anisotropic filtering algorithms.
The choice is obvious in the Premium class. The GeForce 8800 GTX is unrivalled. None other graphics card available can challenge it. In the High-End class you choose between the Radeon X1950 XTX and the GeForce 8800 GTS. Nvidia’s card supports DirectX 10, which does not matter much at this time, and performs faster, which balances the scale in favor of 8800 GTS.
The Nvidia GeForce 7950 GX2 features out-dated technologies and would only make an appealing option if there were a total lack of other alternatives. Well, if you already own such a card, you shouldn’t hurry to replace it. It will be delivering high enough performance until there is choice between the GeForce 8800 GTX and the new-generation flagship solution from AMD.
The Radeon X1900 XT once used to be a definite leader among Performance-Mainstream products. It used to have most advanced technical characteristics in the class, but now it is challenged by the dangerous GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB. Our tests show that the new card from Nvidia enjoys a big advantage in low resolutions, but the gap between the two shrinks from 30% to less than 15% in 1600x1200 already. It must be due to the lack of graphics memory (this GeForce has 320 megabytes of memory as opposed to the AMD card’s 512 megabytes). The Radeon X1900 XT then strikes back in 1920x1200, outperforming the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB by about 20%.
The GeForce 7950 GT cannot compete with the Radeon X1900 XT and was never meant to, actually. The Radeon X1900 XT used to be opposed by the GeForce 7900 GTX, which is currently out of production but can be still seen in shops, and is currently successfully rivaled by the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB. Instead, the GeForce 7950 GT attacks the Radeon X1950 Pro, and indeed with some success. The speed is comfortably high in resolutions up to and including 1280x1024, which is good considering how large the scenes of Battlefield 2142 are. The GeForce 7900 GS is obviously limited by the speed of its GPU. It cannot stand competition in the Performance-Mainstream class and is not a rival to the Radeon X1950 Pro. We’ll view this graphics card as belonging with the Mainstream class henceforth.
So, the GeForce 7950 GT and the Radeon X1950 Pro are practically equals if you put aside the latter’s higher-quality anisotropic filtering. Considering the arrival of the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB with its official price of $299, these graphics cards are going to move one step down, into the Mainstream category.
At this time it’s hard to predict the future market situation as AMD can only respond with the Radeon X1950 XTX which belongs to a higher price category. The Radeon X1900 XT is a leader among graphics cards with non-unified architecture in this class, but is slower than the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB in the display resolutions demanded most by the gamer.
There is only one thing I can conclude with all certainty: GeForce 7900 GS should only be purchased if you’re replacing an even weaker graphics card or have been using an integrated graphics core, and also if you are not planning on enabling full-screen antialiasing in modern games and own a not very powerful power supply unit.
The performance difference between Radeon X1650 XT and GeForce 7600 GT is smaller, than between Radeon X1950 Pro and GeForce 7900 GS, yet it is noticeable and is not in favor of the Nvidia solution, either. The speeds are not sufficient for comfortable gaming, though. The average frame rate is about 40fps in the lowest resolution of the pure speed mode whereas you want 60fps to have full comfort in a first-person 3D shooter.
You can achieve a higher speed by lowering the level of detail, but the game’s visuals will suffer as a consequence. Thus, the graphics hardware from the bottom segment of the mainstream class does not suit quite right for playing Battlefield 2142.
This game will bring you back into the past and into the Wild American West. A western-styled shooter is a rarity by itself and Call of Juarez adds to it with its dynamic plot and high-quality visuals like in the best of gaming projects. The game engine supports HDR, so this game is tested without full-screen antialiasing.
HDR and large open scenes are a heavy load on the computer’s graphics subsystem. Although we don’t use full-screen antialiasing, the average speed of such a powerful graphics card as the GeForce 8800 GTX is only 50fps, the minimum being as low as 24fps.
With Nvidia’s current driver the game has visual artifacts on GeForce 8800 series cards: shadows cast by objects may disappear spontaneously. This problem doesn’t show up on graphics cards with the GeForce 7 and Radeon X1000 architectures.
The GeForce 7950 GX2 with its two graphics cores feels good enough in this test, while the Radeon X1950 XTX cannot give you 30fps even at a resolution of 1280x1024 pixels. The higher resolutions are virtually unplayable. The upcoming solution from AMD will perhaps allow playing at 1600x1200 or this will still remain a prerogative of multi-GPU systems.
So, despite the excellent speed of the GeForce 8800 GTX we cannot call it a gamer’s choice (just like we cannot regard the GeForce 8800 GTS as such) because you can have problems with it not only in Call of Juarez. If you don’t want to experiment, wait until the ForceWare driver is polished off or until AMD’s new generation of graphics cards appears to make your choice basing on comparative tests.
None of the graphics cards available in this class delivers a comfortable frame rate here. The minimum speed is 10-15fps, which means jerkiness and slowdowns in complex scenes. Even the new GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB cannot provide you comfortable gaming conditions although its speed is much higher than that of the other cards. Its average frame rate is 39fps at best with a minimum of 25fps. However, this is the only representative of the Performance-Mainstream category that allows playing Call of Juarez with some comfort, if we disregard some image artifacts.
Things stand even worse with Mainstream graphics cards. The average frame rate is lower than 20fps, so the game is utterly unplayable. If you want to play Call of Juarez in best quality and with full comfort, you’ll need to replace your mainstream graphics card with something better.
We go over from shooters to strategies now. And we do so very smoothly because Company of Heroes belongs to the tactical RTS genre, but features visuals of a good 3D shooter. The rich visuals have not been developed at the expense of the strategic aspect of the game, though. Company of Heroes takes into account such subtleties as the difference in the thickness of a tank’s front and side armor, the arcs of fire of gun crews and machinery, etc. Such things are sure to please a true admirer of the genre.
Unfortunately, the game refused to run with enabled 4x FSAA at the Ultra graphics quality settings. We decided the matter in favor of the highest level of detail and benchmarked the cards in Company of Heroes with anisotropic filtering only.
First place belongs to the GeForce 8800 GTX, just like in the previous cases. Nvidia’s flagship product is fast enough for you to be able to play this game at a resolution of 1920x1200 pixels. This is good news for people who have got modern monitors with a large diagonal.
Despite its two G71 processors the GeForce 7950 GX2 loses this round to the single-processor Radeon X1950 XTX which has as many pixel processors but is free from the inherent drawbacks of multi-GPU technologies. At the same time, GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB demonstrated performance level comparable with that of Radeon X1950 XTX. However, all three cards delivered excellent performance in 1600x1200 resolution. If you’ve got any of them and don’t want to upgrade, and if your monitor does not support display resolutions above 1600x1200 or 1680x1050, you can play Company of Heroes comfortably with the highest possible graphics quality settings.
All the graphics cards in this category, except for the GeForce 7900 GS, which should rather be regarded as a Mainstream product now, deliver acceptable performance at a resolution of 1280x1024. Having a well-balanced specification, the AMD Radeon X1900 XT deservedly takes first place, even leaving the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB behind.
Both, Radeon X1950 Pro and the GeForce 7950 cards, provide comfortable average gaming speeds in 1280x1024 resolution. The AMD solution is even somewhat faster than the Nvidia fellow.
These results can hardly please owners of Mainstream graphics cards. It is clear that neither the GeForce 7900 GS nor the Radeon X1650 Pro, let alone the GeForce 7600 GT, can ensure fully comfortable gameplay here. Although the average speed of the Radeon X1650 XT is rather high, the minimum speed is below 10fps. It means slowdowns and loss of control accuracy which is no less important for a real-time strategy than for a first-person shooter.
Gothic 3 is a third-person RPG, just like the famous TES IV: Oblivion. And these are actually the only projects of such a high level which have no other rivals in their genre as yet. Like TES IV, Gothic 3 offers you total freedom of action and a vast game world to explore, from snow-covered plains and forests, to cities and hot deserts. All of the game locations look gorgeous on the Genome Engine notwithstanding a certain excess of special effects like bloom, depth of field, and fog.
Even with the latest patch the game does not support full-screen antialiasing correctly, so we benchmarked the cards in Gothic 3 in the pure speed mode only.
This is not a first-person shooter and our requirements to the average and minimum frame rates are not so strict here. To play this game comfortably, you need a frame rate of no less than 24-25fps. Every graphics card meets this requirement at a resolution of 1280x1024 pixels, except for the dual-processor GeForce 7950 GX2 whose SLI technology has problems here.
The GeForce 8800 GTX is expectably in the lead. It will remain superior at least until the release of AMD’s graphics cards based on the new-generation graphics core. This is the only card that allows playing Gothic 3 at a resolution of 1600x1200 pixels and, with some reservations, even at 1920x1200. The AMD Radeon X1950 XTX, the best solution from the last generation, is limited to 1280x1024 where it delivers an average frame rate of only 35fps.
Here, the choice of the gamer who is going to upgrade his computer is obvious: an Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX or, for people who don’t have that much money, a GeForce 8800 GTS. Users who have a Radeon X1950 XTX should not replace it with Nvidia’s products. But if you’ve got a GeForce 7950 GX2, you won’t be able to play Gothic 3 comfortably without reducing the level of detail or switching to resolutions lower than the popular 1280x1024.
We cannot talk about adequate performance here just because the minimum frame rate of every graphics card is low. Compared to the other products in this class, except for the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB, the Radeon X1900 XT has more pixel processors, the largest amount of memory, and the highest TMU frequency. It is in the lead in every resolution as the consequence. If you’ve got this graphics card, you can play the game at 1280x1024 even though with occasional slowdowns to 19fps.
The GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB and the Radeon X1950 Pro share second place but neither of them ensures a high minimum of speed. They are both inferior in this respect to the GeForce 7950 GT which has a min speed comparable to that of the Radeon X1900 XT.
As we know, TES IV: Oblivion can run on a weaker graphics subsystem but offers the same or even better-quality visuals (opinions differ on this point) than Gothic 3. So, we still hope next patches will make Gothic 3 playable on more graphics cards and in more resolutions.
It’s simple to choose a Performance-Mainstream graphics card for playing Gothic 3. The 512MB version of the Radeon X1900 XT is the best buy today. Despite its new architecture the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB cannot yet outperform the competitor in this case, however things may change once Nvidia improves their ForceWare drivers.
There’s no talking about comfortable play in the lowest class. You have to think about upgrading, if you’ve got a GeForce 7900 GS, 7600 GT or a Radeon X1650 XT. The AMD Radeon X1650 XT with its 24 pixel processors turns out the best here, yet it cannot deliver a frame rate of even 25fps.
If you don’t replace your graphics card, you have to give up trying to play this game at the maximum level of detail or in a high resolution.
All lovers of role-play games will surely appreciate Neverwinter Nights 2. Unlike games of the increasingly more popular third-person RPG genre, it puts a whole team of characters, each with unique habits and abilities, under your control. Complex relations between the team members, sophisticated quests, an exciting plot, and a rich selection of weaponry – you’ll find all this in Neverwinter Nights 2.
The game’s visuals are made on a high technical level, with the ensuing consequences for the graphics subsystem. The release of a new official patch has made it possible to enable full-screen in NWN2 and we benchmarked the Premium, High-End and Performance-Mainstream cards in the eye candy mode.
Fortunately, the specifics of the NWN 2 gameplay make this game enjoyable even at an average performance of 25-30fps with a minimum of 15fps. It is only when the speed bottoms out below the latter point that you can experience problems with control (your commands may be ignored, some actions may be skipped over, etc).
Like in the previous tests the GeForce 8800 GTX occupies first place, allowing the gamer to enjoy Neverwinter Nights 2 fully even in 1920x1200 resolution (the maximum for GeForce 8800 GTS is 1600x1200). The GeForce 7950 GX2 is quite fast for playing in resolutions up to 1280x1024 inclusive, but its speed plummets to below acceptable in 1600x1200.
The Radeon X1950 XTX cannot yield 25fps even at 1280x1024 while its minimum speed is so low that you are sure to have the problems described above.
Don’t forget we’re talking about the highest quality of graphics you can select in the game menu. You can increase speed by disabling shadows or refraction/reflection effects, but this will spoil the overall impression somewhat. Disabling 4x FSAA on top-end modern graphics cards does not provide a big speed gain in NWN 2, so you have only one solution left which is to reduce the display resolution.
And if the owners of flagship AMD products don’t want to compromise, they should either wait for the new-generation R600 based graphics cards or replace their solution with a GeForce 8800 GTX now. You shouldn’t put your stake on CrossFire or SLI technologies here as both work incorrectly with NWN 2, suffering a performance hit.
The game cannot be played with comfort on these graphics cards at the highest graphics quality settings because you can’t get an average frame rate higher than 20fps on a Performance-Mainstream or Mainstream solution.
GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB, GeForce 7950 GT and Radeon X1900 XT perform at about the same level, the latter being slightly faster than the first two. At the same time, better value adapters, such as GeForce 7900 GS and Radeon X1950 Pro, perform at a low or very low level. Looks like it is enabled FSAA and very little onboard memory that affect the results. As we will see later on GeForce 7900 GS with enabled FSAA runs even slower than GeForce 7600 GT or Radeon X1650 XT without FSAA.
The GeForce 7600 GT and Radeon X1650 XT deliver pretty similar results, which are however too low for comfortable play. You can’t play this game on these cards without lowering the display resolution of the level of detail unless you upgrade your graphics card.
The sequel to the popular third-person shooter series of Splinter Cell will tell you about new adventures of agent Fisher who is has to penetrate into the terrorist organization called JBA and perform their jobs for a while, which explains the name of the game. SC: DA offers you a couple of new tricks like the main character’s ability to hide under a table and to drag enemies down under water.
Featuring improved graphics (in comparison with the previous titles of the series) and not very complex missions, Double Agent can be the entertainment to pass away the sixth night of your gaming week with.
Unfortunately, the game refused to run on the GeForce 8800 GTX, issuing an error message all the time. This is just another indication that the new generation of Nvidia’s graphics cards is still not 100% stable and compatible with existing software. We have to wait for this problem to be corrected in the next version of ForceWare or in the next patch to Splinter Cell: Double Agent. So, owners of GeForce 8800 series cards cannot as yet enjoy this game.
When it comes to graphics cards with ordinary, non-unified architecture, we can state that Nvidia’s multi-GPU concept does not work again. The GeForce 7950 GX2 is far slower than the AMD Radeon X1950 XTX and does not allow using full-screen antialiasing in neither of the standard resolutions. Judging by the obtained data, only one graphics core is in fact active in this test. This shows once again that the GeForce 7950 GX2 depends on how SLI technology is supported by the driver for each particular game.
The Radeon X1950 XTX is not very fast, either, but its average frame rate of 35fps with occasional slowdowns to 25-26fps allows playing SC: Double Agent normally because you don’t need as high a frame rate as in a first-person shooter to play a third-person one.
So, if you have earlier preferred the Nvidia GeForce 7950 GS to other cards, you may find that SLI technology is not compatible with new games and the graphics card does not deliver the performance you might expect from it because Nvidia currently focuses on supporting its new GeForce 8 graphics architecture. But if you’ve got a Radeon X1950 XTX, you have no reason to worry – your graphics card will be always giving you the best it can.
The Performance-Mainstream graphics cards don’t cope with this test well. The game does not launch at all on the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB, and the Radeon X1900 XT is the only card among the remaining ones that keeps the frame rate above 25fps. Its performance is barely enough for comfortable play. The GeForce 7950 GT is slower by about 11%. The Radeon X1950 Pro cannot deliver a frame rate of higher than 20fps. The GeForce 7900 GS can’t do that either, though.
In other words, it is evident that using FSAA in Splinter Cell: Double Agent on graphics cards of this class is not a good idea. You won’t be able to get comfortable gaming speed by all means, except if you reduce the level of detail or lower the display resolution to 1024x768. As a result, the best way-out in this case would be to disable FSAA, which will boost the gaming performance significantly.
Everything we’ve said in the previous paragraph refers to the Mainstream class, too. Note that the Radeon X1650 XT enjoys some advantage over the GeForce 7600 GT as its architecture is better suited for today’s applications.
Supreme Commander belongs to the RTS genre, but this game has little to do with the other strategy described in this review, Company of Heroes. The game is epic in the best traditions of Total Annihilation and allows combining capabilities of different buildings and war units to achieve your goals. If you are into classic real-time strategies, Supreme Commander is going to please you for sure.
The game is pretty, but not perfect, in terms of visuals. Particularly, it lacks a realistic physical model and changeable landscape. Let’s see if this means lower system requirements.
With all the mentioned drawbacks the game is still very heavy on the computer’s graphics subsystem.
While GeForce 8800 GTX allows playing in all resolutions up to 1920x1200 with enabled full-screen antialiasing with sufficient performance reserve, Radeon X1950 XTX doesn’t offer any reserve of speed in 1920x1200, although you can still play comfortably in this resolution using GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB card. GeForce 7950 GX2 can hardly cope with the game even in 1280x1024 resolution, because its driver seems to have decided not to enable the second GPU at all.
Performance does not fluctuate much in this game: there is a very small difference between the average and minimum frame rate in every resolution with any graphics card. On one hand, this is customary for the genre Supreme Commander belongs to because most of the time a large-scale real-time strategy is to be viewed from above which smoothes out any fluctuations in speed. On the other hand, this is also an indication of a good optimization of the game engine.
If you want to play Supreme Commander on your current Radeon X1950 XTX, you don’t have to replace your graphics card as it is going to run this game at a high enough speed with enabled full-screen antialiasing. It’s different with the GeForce 7950 GX2. The dual-chip ex-flagship from Nvidia is not fast enough and offers a lower quality of anisotropic filtering in comparison with the AMD Radeon X1950 XTX and the Nvidia GeForce 8800 series.
The Performance-Mainstream graphics cards cope with this game quite successfully even though they run it with enabled full-screen antialiasing. This is especially true for the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB whose performance is high enough for playing at a resolution of 1920x1200 in the eye candy mode. The Radeon X1900 XT also has good results in 1920x1200, which is a typical native resolution of 23” and larger monitors, because the difference between the average and minimum speed is very small in Supreme Commander. You may want to limit yourself to 1600x1200 with this graphics card, though, just to make sure you’ve got some reserve of speed.
The GeForce 7950 GT is considerably faster than the Radeon X1950 Pro in high resolutions, but not in 1280x1024 which is the most important resolution for graphics cards of this class. GeForce 7900 GS results theoretically allow playing in 1280x1024 with enabled full-screen antialiasing, but its practical reserve of speed is low, so you may want to disable FSAA for higher gaming comfort.
Neither the Radeon X1650 XT nor the GeForce 7600 GT can provide even those 28 frames-per-second the GeForce 7900 GS delivered. In both cases the average speed is below acceptable minimal performance level, although we did not use full-screen antialiasing when benchmarking these cards.
Having benchmarked 11 games in 7 games we can now give you some recommendations on upgrading your gaming platform. We put the test data into diagrams for easier comparison so that you could see what solution would be most optimal for your particular needs without going over the detailed performance charts again.
Without any doubt the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS currently deliver the highest possible performance among top-end graphics solutions. These are in fact the only representatives of the Premium class in this review. New solutions from AMD/ATI are yet to appear while Nvidia has been sitting on the technology leader’s throne for quite long already.
The GeForce 8800 GTX has no rivals when it comes to sheer speed. It can often ensure a comfortable frame rate even in 1920x1200 with enabled full-screen antialiasing. Being the only product of its kind, the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX seems to be the best buy in case you’ve got the money and are ready to part with it to purchase the highest performance possible today.
We want to warn you against hasty choices, though. The problem with the new GeForce series is that although it was officially announced about 5 months back, it still has incompatibility issues with some games. We used only 7 games in this review, but two of them had problems on the GeForce 8800 series cards: flickering shadows in Call of Juarez , and Splinter Cell: Double Agent that refused to run at all. You should be aware of this when you are considering a GeForce 8800. You may want to make sure beforehand that the GeForce 8800 GTX or GTS is compatible with your favorite games. Perhaps you should even wait for the arrival of AMD’s graphics cards on the new-generation GPU. You’ll have more choice and the driver for the GeForce 8800 will have got perfected by then.
The ATI Radeon X1950 XTX can still ensure good performance in modern games and, considering the above-mentioned problems with Nvidia’s new series, you don’t have to replace it immediately with a GeForce 8800 GTS. Purchasing a GeForce 8800 GTX, which is far faster than the Radeon, only makes sense if your monitor supports resolutions above 1600x1200. Until the release of AMD’s new series, the Radeon X1950 XTX will be able to satisfy your need for high-quality and fast graphics, although you won’t be able to use the resolution of 1920x1200 with enabled 4x FSAA.
The perspectives of the Nvidia GeForce 7950 GX2 are not so bright. The great potential of this graphics card from Nvidia comes from SLI technology which does not always work as desired and depends entirely on its support by the ForceWare driver. Since Nvidia is now focusing mostly on the GeForce 8 series and Windows Vista operating system, the GeForce 7950 GX2 may be left on its own. As a result, its speed is much lower than expected in a number of new games, namely in Company of Heroes, Splinter Cell: Double Agent and Supreme Commander because only one of its two graphics cores was active. This card enjoys a considerable advantage over the Radeon X1950 XTX in Call of Juarez and is a little ahead of it in Neverwinter Nights 2 . That’s all. It means the owner of a GeForce 7950 GX2 should consider upgrading his graphics card just because he can find himself with only half the card on his hands, roughly equal to the GeForce 7950 GT in terms of speed. The choice is simple here: buy a GeForce 8800 GTS/GTX (but consider the information given above) or wait for the new generation of graphics cards from AMD.
Two graphics cards stand out in the Performance-Mainstream class. They are the well-known AMD Radeon X1900 XT and the recently announced Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB supporting DirectX 10, which makes it the best solution from the long-tern use prospective. It is these two that are competing for the title of the best product in their category only in the today’s games (because in DirectX 10 games ATI’s solution will hardly be able to keep up). It may seem strange, but it is not the Nvidia solution that wins here. We should explain it for each particular resolution, though.
Since we benchmarked graphics cards of this class in the eye candy mode (in games that support FSAA), the resolution of 1280x1024 pixels is the most important one. In this resolution the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB is superior over the Radeon X1900 XT in three games out of seven, namely in Battlefield 2142 , Call of Juarez and Supreme Commander . Yet in the first and last case the Radeon X1900 XT actually provides the same high level of comfort whereas Call of Juarez shows visual artifacts when launched on a GeForce 8 series card. Added that Splinter Cell: Double Agent does not start up on this graphics card at all, we can’t really say that the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB is preferable to the Radeon X1900 XT.
Comparing the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB with the GeForce 7950 GT or the Radeon X1950 Pro, we again see it being superior in Battlefield 2142 and Supreme Commander only. And it is only in the latter game that the two mentioned cards have serious problems with performance. In the other cases these graphics cards match each other notwithstanding the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB’s 320-bit memory access, 96 unified shader processors, 24 TMUs and 20 ROPs.
The tests of Call of Juarez and Neverwinter Nights 2 show that the Radeon X1950 Pro suffers from low fill rate. Although its graphics core is 25MHz faster than the GeForce 7950 GT core, it has half the amount of texture-mapping units. This is not the graphics card’s fault, though. We guess the game developers just used texture sampling too excessively, just like in the popular shooter Serious Sam 2 . Or perhaps they utilized some specific features of the GeForce 7 architecture. The AMD card performs quite successfully in other games, no less advanced technically.
The resolution of 1600x1200 pixels is too heavy for graphics cards like Radeon X1950 Pro and GeForce 7950 GT when it comes to modern games. They can provide an average speed of 40-45fps at best. The GeForce 7950 GT looks somewhat better than its opponents in this resolution. As for the leaders, the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB is still superior over the Radeon X1900 XT in three games, and its advantage in Battlefield 2142 is not as impressive as it is in 1280x1024 – the Nvidia solution seems to feel a lack of graphics memory. Considering the problems of the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB with image quality in Call of Juarez and that it cannot launch Splinter Cell: Double Agent at all, we should name the Radeon X1900 XT the winner of this round, too.
The numbers we’ve got in the last and heaviest round have little practical value because Performance-Mainstream graphics cards cannot ensure acceptably high speeds in this mode. Anyway, the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB is on the losing side. It is ahead of the Radeon X1900 XT in only two games now, and in one of these games, Call of Juarez , it shows image artifacts (shadows flickering). The Company of Heroes test produced astonishing results: the Nvidia card, being far superior to the Radeon X1950 Pro in characteristics, proved to be slower than the Radeon! It indicates that the driver still needs to be improved, because there is no way we could explain how the graphics card with 320MB onboard managed to run twice as fast as the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB.
In the bottom segment you choice is between the Radeon X1950 Pro and the GeForce 7950 GT. Although these graphics cards have similar results, the Nvidia solution is preferable due to its higher performance in Call of Juarez and Neverwinter Nights 2 . On the other hand, the Radeon X1950 Pro ensures higher quality of anisotropic filtering.
The Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS stands aloof from the others in this category. It cannot ensure comfortable gaming conditions in modern games due to its low GPU clock rate. That’s why this graphics card should rather belong to the Mainstream class where it would be superior to graphics cards with a 128-bit memory bus.
We did not turn on full-screen antialiasing when benchmarking Mainstream graphics cards, but their results suggest that devices from this category cannot ensure a comfortable level of performance in modern games, at least in common display resolutions and at the highest in-game graphics quality settings.
Purchasing a AMD Radeon X1650 XT, an Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS or an Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT only makes sense if your system has been equipped with an integrated graphics core or with an obsolete graphics card like a GeForce 6600 GT or Radeon X800 and you just don’t have the money or desire to buy a higher-performance product.
If you are indeed choosing among these models, you should consider the AMD Radeon X1650 XT in the first place. Based on the RV560 graphics core, this card is generally faster than the GeForce 7600 GT. Be careful when shopping and do not buy a Radeon X1650 Pro which is based on the much weaker RV530/535 core and is in fact a renamed Radeon X1600 XT. With only 4 texture-mapping units and 4 raster operators this core just cannot run modern games at high speeds.
The Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS is a good choice, too, in case if you find it selling at a price comparable to the Radeon X1650 XT. For this small money you can get a 256-bit memory bus, 20 pixel processors, 20 TMUs, 16 ROPs and a G71 chip with a high overclocking potential.
