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ATI Radeon X1950 XTX 512MB PCI-E Preview
Test Setup
We will be using three popular games for benchmarking in our preview: Half-Life 2 Episode 1, F.E.A.R. - First Encounter Assault Recon, Need for Speed: Most Wanted. These games span across multiple genres and vary greatly in their use of shader effects (not to mention they do a great job of stressing out video cards). Please note that we have made the move from benchmarking Half-Life 2 to Half-Life 2 Episode 1 primarily because HDR has been implemented in the latter and therefore is more stressful on GPUs. The system we are using for benchmarking consists of an ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe Socket 939 motherboard which utilizes the ATI Crossfire Xpress 3200 chipset. An AMD Athlon64 FX-55 is used along with 2 GB of Corsair PC-3200 XMS XL Pro memory running in dual channel mode with 2-2-2-5 timings. Every component of the system is at stock or default speeds set by the manufacturer. Windows XP was installed onto a freshly formatted Seagate Barracuda 80GB SATA hard drive connected via on-chip SATA. All the latest Windows Updates were downloaded and installed. The latest video drivers at the time of testing were installed - Catalyst beta drivers for the ATI X1950 XTX, Catalyst 6.7 for the ATI X1900 XTX. In the video card control panel V-SYNC was disabled and the cards were set to "quality" over "performance." For the ATI cards that means "Texture Preference" and "Mipmap Detail Level" were both set to "High Quality" while Anti Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering were custom for each test. For NVIDIA cards, the "Image Settings" slider was set to "High Quality." V-Sync was disabled for all testing. Everything else was left to the default settings. Default quality levels for AA and AF were used as opposed to Transparency AA, High Quality AF! To ensure the best possible results, we run each benchmark three times for each test and average the results. When possible, we benchmark a recorded timedemo, which prints the average FPS (frames per second) when finished running. Not all games allow you to record a timedemo, though, so testing may differ for some games. The details for how a specific benchmark was run can be found on the corresponding benchmark page. Test Computer: ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe Socket 939 Motherboard AMD Athlon64 FX-55 2 GB Corsair TwinX PC-3200 XMS XL Pro Series (Dual Channels @ 2-2-2-5) Seagate Barracuda 80GB SATA Hard Drive (Donated by Seagate) Enermax Liberty 620W SLI Certified Power Supply (Donated by Enermax) Windows XP Professional SP2 w/ DirectX 9.0c and latest updates (Donated by Microsoft) When analyzing the performance graphs on the following pages, I will sometimes refer to settings that offer the best gaming experience. To me, a good gaming experience offers the right mixture of speed and image quality as well as smooth gameplay. Playing a game at 50 FPS with smooth edges and crisp textures would offer a better overall gaming experience than playing at 100 FPS with "jaggies,' noticeable texture filtering and bogging-down in certain areas. Personally, I think 40-50 FPS generally allows for a smooth experience and my comments will stem from that belief. Your opinions may differ. Of course, certain game genres will let you enjoy the gameplay with 20+ FPS, but we'll talk about that where it applies.
Page 1: Introduction & The Cards
Page 2: Test Setup Page 3: Benchmarks: Half-Life 2 Episode 1 Page 4: F.E.A.R. Page 5: Need for Speed Most Wanted Page 6: Performance Summary & Closing Thoughts 
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