ATI Radeon X1900 Series Preview

Reviews: Hardware

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Kurtis Kronk
Brian
ATI
Jan. 24, 2006

Specifications

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Benchmarks - Need for Speed Most Wanted

Need for Speed Most Wanted is the newest in a long series of NFS titles. This game is extremely taxing even on some of the highest-end hardware available today if you crank up the video settings. And of course, we do crank up the settings for benchmarking. Unfortunately this game does not support a demo recording feature that I am aware of and there is no built-in benchmarking utility. As such, I am forced to use FRAPS and run the same course multiple times for the various settings.

For benchmarking I go to Quick Race > Custom Race > Circuit > Ironwood Estates > 3 laps, and I use the same car each time (a pimped out RX-8 if you're curious, but not too pimped out because I don't have the time to play and earn more upgrades). Rather than repeating each test 3 times, I let the 3 laps do the averaging for me, and my runs are consistent; I take the same turns each time. Luckily, the weather is programmed into the specific quick race, so it always rains at the beginning of the first lap, then gets sunny, then gets a bit darker as clouds roll in for the second and third laps, so that helps in the consistency department.

All of the in-game video settings are maxed out and the only variables are AA, AF, and resolution. Since the AA and AF sliders represent different values on ATI and NVIDIA cards I just test AA and AF at their minimum and maximum respective settings at each resolution. Otherwise the comparisons lose their value.

Need for Speed Most Wanted @ 1024 x 768
(Show All Graphs)

No AA / No AF

Full AA / Full AF

ATI X1900 XTX 512 MB

ATI X1800 XT 512 MB

XFX 7800 GTX 256 MB

ATI X850 XT PE 256 MB

XFX 6800 GT 256 MB

FPS

No AA / No AF

Full AA / Full AF

ATI X1800 XT 512 MB

XFX 7800 GTX 256 MB

ATI X1900 XTX 512 MB

ATI X850 XT PE 256 MB

XFX 6800 GT 256 MB

FPS

Need for Speed Most Wanted @ 1600 x 1200
(Show All Graphs)

No AA / No AF

Full AA / Full AF

XFX 7800 GTX 256 MB

ATI X1900 XTX 512 MB

ATI X1800 XT 512 MB

ATI X850 XT PE 256 MB

XFX 6800 GT 256 MB

FPS

No AA / No AF

Full AA / Full AF

ATI X1900 XTX 512 MB

XFX 7800 GTX 256 MB

ATI X1800 XT 512 MB

ATI X850 XT PE 256 MB

XFX 6800 GT 256 MB

FPS

The results in Need for Speed Most Wanted are a little strange. There is no clear winner here. The X1800 XT, X1900 XTX and 7800 GTX take turns being on top. How the X1800 XT got that far ahead of the X1900 XTX I have no idea.

We'd like to thank Directron.com for donating the ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Socket 939 Motherboard which we used for testing.

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Page 9 of 10

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Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: Introducing the X1900 Series (R580) / Architecture & New Features
Page 3: The Card (X1900 XTX)
Page 4: Test Setup
Page 5: Benchmarks - Half-Life 2
Page 6: Benchmarks - Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
Page 7: Benchmarks - F.E.A.R. First Encounter Assault Recon
Page 8: Benchmarks - Quake 4
Page 9: Benchmarks - Need for Speed Most Wanted
Page 10: Closing Thoughts

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3 User Comments

1 - Posted by J2T on May 31, 2007 - 5:53 am

??? time warp?

2 - Posted by Kurtis on May 31, 2007 - 12:17 pm

i'm sure there was a spam post, then the spam was deleted, leaving a bumped thread. =]

3 - Posted by J2T on June 1, 2007 - 6:07 pm

haha, excuses excuses :)

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