![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Friday , May 27, 2005
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
PowerColor Bravo X700 256MB Review
We’ve got a retail PowerColor RADEON X700 256MB based video card for review today. Read inside to see which card is actually better for gaming, a 256MB PowerColor X700 or a 128MB GeForce 6600. This should prove to be interesting…
DOOM 3
(OpenGL)
We are using the full retail version of DOOM 3 and leaving each video card’s driver control panel to “Application Preference” for AA and AF. We set the DOOM 3 in-game quality setting and resolution that played the best on each card. We utilized the in-game DOOM 3 AA setting to change AA level.
For our manual run-through, we chose the “Enpro” level and used FRAPS to capture the frame rate every second and started our run-through from the beginning to half way through the mission. We played the game in a normal fashion, which means each run-through on each card will be a little different, but it still represents the same course through the level.
With the PowerColor Bravo X700, we just simply were not able to play DOOM 3 in High Quality mode at any respectable resolution. To play smoothly in DOOM 3 in High Quality mode, you would have to play the game at 800x600 to achieve fast enough performance. We found that moving down to Medium Quality, which disables Anisotropic Filtering was playable at 1024x768. Therefore, it is up to you to decide if you like High Quality mode at 800x600 or Medium Quality at 1024x768. In our opinion, the game looks better if you can raise the resolution first, then the image quality settings second. Therefore, the best balance of image quality and performance, in our opinion, is 1024x768 with no AA/no AF in Medium Quality mode. The GeForce 6600 with 128MB of RAM is clearly faster in this game allowing High Quality mode at 1024x768.
Image Quality:
The major image quality difference between the two video cards is the ability to have 8XAF enabled with the GeForce 6600 in DOOM 3. Other than that the effects, shadows, and textures looked similar between the cards.