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ATI Radeon X1000 Series Preview
Benchmarks - Half-Life 2
 Our Half-Life 2 benchmark consists of a timedemo we recorded in the airboat level. In this timedemo Gordon is in a boat and emerges from an enclosed area into a canal. He maneuvers through several obstacles and eventually comes across some enemies. Some Combine dropships fly by overhead and a couple of Combine soldiers on the ground fire their weapons. There is a lot of water in this scene. All of the in-game graphical settings were set to high. The "Reflections" drop down menu was set to "Reflect All." The "HDR" drop-down menu was set to "None." Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering were controlled through a batch file which changes the in-game settings. After the batch has finished running, the average frames per second for each test is output to a file. For each test, the timedemo was run three times and the results were averaged.
Half Life 2 1024 x 768
(Show All Graphs)
88.16
88.06
86.5
86.4
86.2
83.4
83.23
75.8
0
FPS
100
87.86
86.96
86.7
83.8
73.5
69
57
52.2
0
FPS
100
Half Life 2 1600 x 1200
(Show All Graphs)
86.9
84.8
84.7
83.1
71.5
65.66
52.8
35.1
0
FPS
100
83.76
76.2
71.9
42.7
39.66
21.6
17.8
n/a
0
FPS
100
Half Life 2 2048 x 1536
(Show All Graphs)
82.1
80
77.5
74.6
49.5
0
FPS
100
73.6
51.76
46.1
19.4
n/a
0
FPS
100
I was a bit surprised to see that the X1800 XT didn't have a bigger lead over the 7800 GTX in Half-Life 2, but then again, this could be due to a CPU bottleneck. You can see the extra 256MB of video memory coming into play when you get up to 2048x1536 with 4xAA/8xAF, just as we experienced with the X800 XL 512MB card a few months ago. As one would expect from a top-of-the-line video card, we see playable frame rates through all these tests we ran. The X1800 XL is neck and neck with the 7800 GT, although for some reason it wouldn't run a couple of the tests I had in my benchmarking batch file. More details on that can be found towards the bottom of this page. The X1600 XT performs about where I would expect, between the 6800 GT and 6600GT. Frame rates are playable up to 1600x1200 with 4xAA/8xAF, but you'd probably be better off at something like 1280x960 with 4xAA/8xAF. Of course, we'll find out for sure what the sweet spot is in our full review. As one would expect, the X1300 Pro trails behind the rest, producing very playable frame rates at 1024x768 even with 4xAA/8xAF. At 1600x1200 though, particularly with image quality settings cranked up, frame rates start to drop to unplayable numbers. Errors I'm not sure of the cause, but it is worth mentioning that with the X1800 XL 256MB, when my benchmark batch file for HL2 tried to run our timedemo at 1600x1200 and 2048x1536 with 4xAA/8xAF, my system would crash to desktop and the following errors would show up. None of the other cards tested had this problem.   
I'd also like to note that when I tried to run the Leadtek 6600GT 128MB at 2048x1536 with 4xAA/8xAF I found myself looking at numerous, very noticable, artifacts. The water turned a flat black, the left side of the sky turned a flat gray, and there were some other strange artifacts as well. I didn't manage to grab any videos or screenshots, so you'll have to take my word that it was not pretty. Obviously, this card isn't meant for such high resolutions anyways, but it's worth mentioning.
Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: Re-Introducing R520 / Availability Page 3: Architecture & New Features Page 4: Question & Answer Session Page 5: The Cards Page 6: Test Setup Page 7: Benchmarks - Half-Life 2 Page 8: Benchmarks - Day of Defeat: Source Page 9: Benchmarks - Doom 3 Page 10: Benchmarks - Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Page 11: Image Quality / Closing Thoughts 
Related Reviews Video Cards September 23, 2009
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Add Comment
8 User Comments 1 - Posted by
Frosty
on October 5, 2005 - 5:37 pm i am gonan keep my 7800gtx thank you very much, i really dont feel the need to upgrade now......
2 - Posted by
sean478
on October 5, 2005 - 7:37 pm Hi :) thanks for the review dude :) I was wandering if you could email me the bioses for these cards? i was planing on makeing flash mod guides for them :) for example x1300np to x1300 pro mod and x1800xl to x1800xt mod ect. :) my email is rswisfamly@cox.net :) getting the bioses: try using a bootable dos disk with flashrom.exe on it http://www.techpowerup.com/bios/bios/flashrom240.z... also try ati flash http://www.techpowerup.com/bios/bios/atiflash309.z... command to enter: atiflash -s 0 you could also try dumping the bios from ati tool (try the latest beta) http://www.techpowerup.com ati tool/settings/misc./dump bios btw do you have access to the demos for the x1800s? do you think i could get ahold of them? :) Edit: you could also try winflash for ati :) http://www.techpowerup.com/bios/bios/winflash105.z... 3 - Posted by
Dyrewolph
on October 5, 2005 - 9:27 pm Haha... hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahah... oooo that's a good one Kurtis! almost made me wet myself!
4 - Posted by
Kurtis
on October 5, 2005 - 10:29 pm hehehe... glad someone catches my little funnies. :-D of course, it's true... but it sounds funny! ;-) 5 - Posted by
Frosty
on October 13, 2005 - 7:27 am it amazes me that with just 16 pipelines they are able to beat the 7800gtx...
6 - Posted by
handrail
on October 13, 2005 - 10:52 pm the x1800xt does have a higher mem and clock speed though. maybe they can just muscle their way through to higher performance?
7 - Posted by
Brian
on October 13, 2005 - 10:54 pm This is a good read: http://www.thetechlounge.com/news.php?id=7669 Looks like ATI put a lot of work into the new chip and have plenty of room to grow. 8 - Posted by
JGFgKnnI
on March 18, 2008 - 11:28 pm Nice site!
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