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ATI Radeon X1950 XTX 512MB PCI-E Preview
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 > 2 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). Each test is repeated 3 times, however, the environment (sun, weather) changes every race and even during a single race, so while the benchmark results are pretty reliable, they're not exactly scientific. To help keep the tests as consistent as possible, I run the same course every race, and I never use the nitrous (because it queues special effects which I can't reproduce precisely every race). 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. I should note that it appears from gameplay and screenshots I've taken that the minimum texture quality (AF) setting represents bilinear filtering. I would think they would at least make it trilinear since it's noticeably better quality and what I consider the standard 'minimum' AF setting - but that's neither NVIDIA nor ATI's fault. Silly EA. Patch 1.3 was used.
Need for Speed Most Wanted @ 1280 x 1024
(Show All Graphs)
56
51
0
FPS
80
51
50
0
FPS
80
Need for Speed Most Wanted @ 1600 x 1200
(Show All Graphs)
51
49
0
FPS
80
43
41
0
FPS
80
Need for Speed Most Wanted @ 1920 x 1200
(Show All Graphs)
45
45
0
FPS
80
38
34
0
FPS
80
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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