![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Monday , September 29, 2003
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
ABIT Siluro FX5900 OTES Review
A look at the new card from ABIT is based on the GeForceFX 5900 core and comes with a completely new OTES cooling solution. Let's see how it compares to the competition using current games.
Splinter Cell
(Direct3D)
The retail version of Splinter Cell for the PC was used. We used patch 1.2 to provide benchmarking abilities in the game. We are using Beyond3D's Oil Refinery Demo as well as Ubisoft's 1_1_1Tbilisi and 1_1_2Tbilisi timedemos. Due to the fact that Splinter Cell has trouble with multi-sample AA on both NVIDIA and ATI products we chose to run the benchmarks with NoAA. Each resolution is listed for each column. We did enable 8XAF so that you can see the performance difference with and without this level of AF.
The 9800 once again pulls out in front here but bunches up with the 5900 somewhat in demos that reflect actual gameplay.
The Oil Refinery map uses DX8 pixel shaders on the water which stress shader speed. With NoAF we barely come above 30FPS on the ABIT OTES FX5900 at 1280x1024. When 8XAF is applied we don’t even break 30FPS at any resolution. On the 9800 Pro with NoAF we are above 30FPS across all resolutions. With 8XAF enabled the only resolution above 30FPS is at 1024x768.
Since AA is not able to function in this game the only advanced filtering technique we can apply is Anisotropic Filtering. Even with these high-end cards I noticed some slowdowns when the maximum AF level was selected on each card. In order to get the maximum performance for smooth gameplay you may want to bring the AF level down a notch from its highest setting. So for the ABIT OTES FX5900 you can set the level to 4X AF for better performance, and on the 9800 Pro you can choose to try Performance 16XAF or Quality 8X AF. It is really trial and error on both cards to find the level of quality versus performance you like to play at with this game.