![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Tuesday , January 24, 2006
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
ATI Radeon X1900 Series Evaluation
ATI’s new series of high-end desktop gaming video cards are poised to provide a more immersive gaming experience. We have many comparisons to show you and some surprising results. If you are a gamer, don’t miss this evaluation.
System Test Setup:
CPU | AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 |
Motherboard | ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe and ATI Xpress 200 Reference |
System Memory | 4 x 512MB Corsair XMS PC3200LLPro |
Hard Drive | Western Digital 74GB Raptor SATA/150 |
OS | Windows XP Pro SP2 with DirectX 9.0c |
For our system platform setup, we are using an ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe, an FX-55 CPU, and 2GB of RAM for the single card evaluation and SLI. For the CrossFire setup, we are using an ATI reference Xpress 200 motherboard with the same CPU and RAM.
Video Cards:
Make & Model | Platform | Core Clock (MHz) | Memory Clock (GHz) | Driver Version | Notes |
Radeon X1900 XTX 512MB | PCI-E | 650 | 1.55 | ATI Beta Catalyst Version 8.203.3 | Non-WHQL |
Radeon X1900 XT CrossFire Edition 512MB | PCI-E | 625 | 1.45 | ATI Beta Catalyst Version 8.203.3 | Non-WHQL |
Radeon X1800 XT | PCI-E | 625 | 1.5 | ATI Beta Catalyst Version 8.203.3 | Non-WHQL |
NVIDIA Reference GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB | PCI-E | 540 | 1.7 | ForceWare 81.98 | WHQL |
BFGTech GeForce 7800 GTX OC 256MB | PCI-E | 460 | 1.3 | ForceWare 81.98 | WHQL |
Game and Video Card Evaluation Setup
For this evaluation, we are using the latest drivers available at this time for all video cards. For all the NVIDIA cards, we are using ForceWare 81.98, which is the latest version on NVIDIA.com at the time of evaluation. For the new ATI X1900 video cards, we are using a driver provided by ATI, which was required in order to detect the cards. The driver provided to us by ATI indicates it is Catalyst version 8.203.3. We also tested the X1800 XT single and CrossFire set with this same driver to make sure everything was equal on the software front. We also made sure all of our games were up to date and running the latest patches available.
All single video cards—and the NVIDIA cards in SLI—were tested on the ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard. Therefore, the X1900 XTX, XT, X1800 XT, 7800 GTX 512, and 7800 GTX 256 were all tested on the A8N-SLI board. For the GeForce 7800 GTX 256 SLI test, we used two reference NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB video cards. For CrossFire, we used an ATI reference Radeon Xpress 200 motherboard for testing the X1800 XT and X1900 XT. The same CPU, memory, and game configurations were used for all tests—the only difference was the motherboard required for the CrossFire evaluation. Remember, the memory controller is on the CPU, so it won’t be an issue between each platform.
Because the Radeon X1900 XT CrossFire edition also works as a single video card as an X1900 XT, we used it to represent X1900 XT performance. The card is basically an X1900 XT with a compositing chip and dual link DVI on board, the clock speeds are the same.
There are 3 graphs under each game on the following pages. The first graph compares the new X1900 XT and XTX with the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 and GTX 256. The second graph compares the new X1900 XT and XTX with the X1800 XT. The third graph compares SLI and CrossFire solutions.
The first goal of this evaluation is to see how ATI’s newest cards compare to what NVIDIA currently has available. The second goal is to see how much of an improvement ATI's latest cards provide over the X1800 XT. The third and final goal is to see how SLI and CrossFire compare and how much they improve the gaming experience.
There is a feature on the ATI video cards that NVIDIA does not support that is known as “High Quality Anisotropic Filtering.” This option, like Adaptive AA, is turned on through the control panel in Catalyst Control Center. All Radeon X1000 series of cards support this non-angle dependent method of Anisotropic Filtering. We explored this feature in our original evaluation and gave plenty of image quality comparison shots. Since we covered the feature already we will not cover it here; nothing has changed, and the feature is still supported with the X1900 XT and XTX. We use it throughout this review because we do find it very playable on the X1900 XT and XTX as you are about to see.
Please be aware we test our video cards a bit differently from what is the norm. We concentrate on examining the real-world gameplay that each video card provides. The Highest Playable section shows the best Image Quality delivered at a playable frame rate. We use a high performance system with a very fast CPU in order to remove CPU bottlenecking.
In our graphs, we use some abbreviations to indicate the method of AA or AF being used.
AD AA = Adaptive AA – Indicates the use of ATI’s Adaptive AA on X1000 series video cards.
HQ AF = High Quality Anisotropic Filtering – Indicates the use of ATI’s High Quality option for Anisotropic Filtering that is not angle dependent.
TR MSAA = Transparency Multisampling Antialiasing – Indicates the use of NVIDIA’s Transparency Multisampling quality setting on GeForce 7 series video cards.
TR SSAA = Transparency Supersampling Antialiasing – Indicates the use of NVIDIA’s Transparency Supersampling quality setting on GeForce 7 series video cards.