![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Tuesday , May 04, 2004
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Radeon X800XT-PE and X800Pro Review
We test the new Radeon X800Pro and X800XT Platinum Edition against a GeForce 6800Ultra and a Radeon 9800XT focusing on real world gameplay performance and image quality.
Drivers:
This is what the Beta Catalyst 4.5 drivers that we are using for this review look like on the Radeon X800Pro and X800XT. As you can see it is the same control panel you are use to, no major changes. This means when you install your new X800Pro or X800XT the control panel will be familiar to you. Under the Direct3D and OpenGL tabs the Anti-Aliasing settings available are 2X, 4X and 6X. The Anisotropic levels are 2X, 4X, 8X and 16X with a Performance and Quality mode. Performance mode forces Bilinear Filtering with Anisotropic and the Quality mode uses Trilinear with Anisotropic. There is also still a slider for TRUFORM as well. There will also be an option to enable and disable the Temporal AA in a future control panel version. Right now ATI has given us a utility tool which enables and disables Temporal AA.
DirectX Info:
There has been a lot of rumor about what version of pixel and vertex shader ATI will support in the X800 series. These are the facts; it supports Vertex Shader 2.0 and Pixel Shader 2.0b. We can show you exactly what features and caps are exposed with DirectX 9.0b on the X800Pro/XT and the GeForce 6800Ultra.
In the first image above we see that Pixel and Vertex Shader 3.0 are not exposed yet on the GeForce 6800Ultra. It won’t be until DirectX 9.0c is out that the 6800Ultra exposes SM 3.0 support. The second picture above shows you the vertex shader caps each card supports. You can see that the Radeon X800Pro/XT does not support Dynamic Flow Control, while the GeForce 6800Ultra does. The X800 does support Static Flow Control with a depth of 1, while the 6800Ultra also supports Static Flow control with with a depth of 4. The 6800Ultra also supports a higher number of temps and the Prediction cap. In the third picture above you can compare the currently exposed Pixel Shader caps. Two important things about the pixel shader comparison, both the X800 series and the 6800Ultra support a minimum of 512 number of instructions in the Pixel Shader as well as the same amount of temporary registers. The 6800Ultra however does support Dynamic Flow Control, Static Flow Control and a few more caps such as Arbitrary Swizzle, Gradient Instructions, Prediction and No Dependent Read Limit.
Anti-Aliasing:
To compare Anti-Aliasing image quality we have cropped a section from screenshots taken in Unreal Tournament 2004 on each card. They are viewed at normal in-game size and were taken at 1024x768.
Looking very closely at each of them we don’t notice any differences in image quality over the Radeon 9800XT. It seems ATI is sticking with their tried and true rotated grid and sparse sampled multi-sampling with gamma correction routine. The image quality is also comparable between the 6800Ultra and the X800 series.
Filtering:
First we wanted to look at the default Trilinear filtering between all four cards to see how they compare.
We have cut the image into fourths with 1/4th put in from each video card. Looking closely you can see the 6800Ultra’s default Brilineiar/Trilinear Optimizations are implemented. The filtering between the X800 series and the 9800XT look identical. Keep in mind these are the default settings in place via the driver, so when you install your video card, install the drivers, and play your games this is the level of Trilinear filtering you will have by default. The X800 series and Radeon 9800XT provide a "truer" default Trilinear image quality.
Since all four cards support 16XAF we can compare what that looks like. At this setting we can clearly see the 6800Ultra’s Brilinear/Trilinear Optimizations at play. By default the X800 series and Radeon 9800XT are providing a better AF quality than NVIDIA's NV40. The fact of the matter is that at default, both cards produce a very comparable ingame image that is hard to discern without studying a still image. That said, ATI's default Anisotropic Filtering is the way we think it should be done.
The above two shots were taken in Unreal Tournament 2004 in the map Deck 17. The first image above shows us a comparison of 8XAF and the second shot is 16XAF. Looking very closely at these still screen shots (6800U is the third section from the top - sorry for the blurry text) we really don’t see any difference in Anisotropic image quality. NVIDIA’s lower Trilinear filtering quality is still there, but in a still screenshot it is hard to notice. Only in actually moving would you notice the difference and then it is questionable to what level of impact, if any, it would have on gameplay.