Antialiasing Performance
With midrange cards, dropping resolution a little and enabling antialiasing is usually an option. We tend to prefer a higher resolution and more settings, especially in an age where games like Oblivion and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory require a choice between HDR and antialiasing in some cases. Hopefully we'll see fewer discrepancies in the future. For now, we've selected three of the games we tested to evaluate AA performance for our midrange group.
Battlefield 2
We see the ~140fps CPU limitation of the Core 2 Extreme X6800 having less of an impact on the X1900 XT, but the rest of the pack seems to scale similarly either with or without AA enabled. Our 6600 GT was unable to render 1920x1440 with 4xAA due to its 128MB memory size, but it isn't playable with AA at over 1024x768 anyway. While the high end of our test shows the top three cards playable at 1920x1440 with 4xAA, our 7600 GT can't be pushed past 1600x1200. The X1600 XT is stuck somewhere between 1024x768 and 1280x1024 depending on how smooth the gamer wants BF2 to run.
As with our non-AA test, the X1900 XT leads at the ~$300 price point, while the X1900 GT leads the 7900 GT in value without sacrificing performance. At the same time, the bump up from the 7600 GT in cost for an X1900 GT looks well worth it if greater than 1600x1200 resolutions are desired for Battlefield 2.
Half-Life 2: Episode One
This time the 6600 GT runs out of gas at 1280x1024 with 4xAA enabled. At the same time, every card other than the (stock) X800 GTO and X1600 XT are playable at 1600x1200 with 4xAA. This is a fairly good alternative to 1920x1440 without AA in Half-Life 2: Episode One. Having a little AA enabled does bring a little more life to the game. Since most of these midrange cards we tested can pull it off, and a good many people don't run higher than 1600x1200 anyway, this is a great option.
Quake 4
Due to the low contrast edges in most of the art and design in Quake 4, antialiasing is usually a little overkill. We'd prefer to run at a higher resolution or with uncompressed normal maps (ultra quality) rather than with AA enabled. But as Id favors OpenGL, we decided it would be beneficial to talk about antialiasing under Quake 4. Like our other tests, the 6600 GT and it's 128MB of RAM just can't handle 4xAA at 1920x1440. We might care about this if the game was at all playable at over 800x600 with 4xAA. The X1900 GT maintains its performance lead over the 7900 GT with AA enabled, but only the X1900 XT can hang on to playability at 1920x1440 with 4xAA. We do see good performance from the X1900 GT and 7900 GT at 1600x1200 though. X1600 XT users will need to stop at 1024x768 if they want to enable 4xAA with high quality settings under Quake 4.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
74 Comments
View All Comments
gmallen - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
Most of the PC enthusiast population interested in mid-range cards are still running AGP motherboards (this is based on sales of pci motherboards vs. agp motherboards). Where are these cards?Josh7289 - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
They don't exist.
arturnowp - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
HiIt's written that all card in oblivion was tested with HDR Lighting with X800GTO doesn't support. I think your results are misleading. The same with SC: Chaos Theory...
BTW: Who plays Oblivion with Actor Fade at 20%, Item Fade at 10% and Object Fade at 25% you get better graphics and performance setting those option to 50-60% and turning off grass with consums a lot of power and doesn't look good. In foliage it's better to see your enemies from greater distance the say with a horse ;-)
arturnowp - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
OK there's writen about SC: Chaos Theory but all in all conclusion are misleading "Owners of the X800 GTO may have a little more life left in their card depending on how overclocked the card is, but even at stock clocks, it might be wise to hang on for another product cycle if possibl" where GeForce 6600GT performe on par with X800GTO. It would be better to exclude X800GTO from charts or mark it as SM 2.0 card. What's better GeForce 6600GT should be tested in SM 2.0 mode...nv40 - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
Don't why?http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/pow...">http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/pow...
Some difference of test are so large that it almost shocked me
For instance:
7900GT@84.21 with FX-60 can run 54 FPS avg in 1600x1200 with 4xAA 16xAF in X-bit lab
7900GT@91.33 with X6800 just be 35 FPS ave in 1600x1200 with only 4x AA in Anandtech
Problem of 91.33? Intel 975X? X6800? nVidia?
more than 40% performance difference despite X6800 is far superior to FX-60
coldpower27 - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
They probably aren't running the same time demo sequences.nv40 - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
Maybe... but only 9% dif in X1900GT (41 vs 38)And 7900GT test in Anandtech definitely performed much worse then X-bit lab in general
nothing with which is correct or not, but if both are right, the the conclusion may be probably draw like below:
1. Driver problem: 91.33 is much slower than 84.21 (nV Cheat, or 91.33 problem)
2. CPU problem: X6800 is much inferior than FX-60 in game (Rediculous, and far from true in every test)
3. Platform problem: nVidia cards perform much worse in intel chipset (975X)
Sharky974 - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
I agree. I clearly remember Xbit declaring the 7900GT to win the vast majority of benches vs the X1900GT.In fact overall the X1900GT wasn't warmly recieved. I really feel this deserves some looking into.
For example, I'll have to go look, but I think Firing Sqaud also showed the X1900GT as inferior to the 7900GT.
As it stands now, it's like Anand's platforms are somehow ATI biased, on the other hand I believe Xbit platform is Nvidia biased. Xbit reviews nearly always show Nvidia winning.
Sharky974 - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/sapphire_radeo...">http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/sapphire_radeo...I started on the first page of benches.
As one glaring example:
Firings squad: Quake 4 1280X1024 4XAA 8XAF 7900GT-87.2 X1900GT-60.6
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/sapphire_radeo...">http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/sapphire_radeo...
Anand: Quake 4 1280X1024 4XAA 7900 GT-45.1 X1900GT-49.8
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/roundups...">http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/roundups...
With similar settings, FS has the 7900GT getting nearly double the frames Anand does. The X1900GT also gets significantly more in FS review, from 49 to 60 FPS, but nowhere near the change the 7900GT sees, with the net effect the X1900GT eaks out a win at Anand, but loses by nearly 27+ FPS at FS.
The X1900GT is definitly a better card than I had remembered, even at the FS benches though.
Also, FS was using a FX-57. Anand a much more powerful CPU, making results all the more puzzling.
In addition to some of the other suggestions, I'd question drivers. FS was using older drivers on both since it is an older review. Perhaps Nvidia drivers have seen a large performance decrease, or ATI's a similar increase? This seems fairly unlikely, though, as I dont think you normally get huge differences from driver to driver.
Unless Nvidia really was cheating RE 16-bit filtering as the INQ claimed a while back, so they fixed it causing a massive performance decrease? :) Again though, that suggestion is made half-jokingly.
This definitly needs a lot of looking into I fell. Anand's results are quite different than others around the web at first blush.
JarredWalton - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
Levels can make a huge difference in performance. For example, Far Cry has segments that get about 80 FPS max on any current CPU (maybe higher with Core 2 Extreme overclocked...), but other areas of the game run at 150+ FPS on even a moderate CPU like a 3500+. I don't have a problem providing our demo files, but some fo them are quite large (Q4 is about 130 MB if I recall). SCCT, FEAR, and X3 provide a reference that anyone can compare to, if they want. The only other thing is that ATI driver improvements are certainly not unlikely, especially in Quake 4.