Final Words
This is an excellent example of a game built around programmable shader power. The geometry and textures are solid updates from the original Refractor2 engine used in Battlefield 1942, and the effects and polish on the final product make the experience complete. Explosions, fog, smoke, fire, water, environments, and other visual effects all come together to really immerse the player in the game.And to run a game like BF2 in all its glory, gamers need cards that can handle the load. As we've shown, the card doesn't need to be expensive to provide a good game-play experience. The budget cards handled lower resolutions just fine for casual gaming (with no AA enabled), and mid-range solutions are just fine for the Battlefield aficionado (offering either 10x7 with AA or 12x10 without as solidly playable resolutions). For those hardcore gamers out there who demand the absolute in performance with frame rates so high that they could slow it down and see bullets (disclaimer: this is not actually possible), the higher end cards are required. At this point, there are no tests we ran that really pushed the 7800 GTX SLI to its limit, but in the future, we plan on looking at resolutions that require dual-link DVI (such as are possible on Apple's latest and largest Cinema Display).
For now, it seems that the NVIDIA parts come out on top in everything but a showdown between the 6800 Ultra and the X850 XT. This is a "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" game, but we don't feel that has any bearing on performance on different vendors' hardware (it would put DICE and EA at a disadvantage to not run as efficiently as possible on all hardware). The 7800 GTX is quite a powerhouse even without SLI enabled. It will be quite interesting to see what ATI comes out with next to try to combat this latest offering. We really can't wait for more tests that are CPU limited at huge resolutions. The faster that happens, the sooner game developers will put the extra power into even more incredible detail.
Each class of card scales well with resolution and AA settings. The main issue that we want to drive home is that this game offers excellent performance in an affordable package - great graphics don't need to slow performance to a halt.
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yanman - Sunday, July 10, 2005 - link
When I tried out BF 1.0 with 77.72 drivers and 2 Galaxy 6600GTs in SLI i had major issues in 1920x1200. I had to revert to 1600x1200 or another square res to fix this. Any idea why I'd have these problems? (basically the image was skewing everywhere at half-way point so obviously a SLI issue)xtknight - Saturday, July 9, 2005 - link
And I almost forgot to mention...great little review/test here.xtknight - Saturday, July 9, 2005 - link
I would have liked to see some 6800 Non-Ultra benchmarks...the AGP version of this card is a much hotter deal then the 6600GT...I saw one for $156 the other day.DanDaMan315 - Saturday, July 9, 2005 - link
Honestly this is the most incomplete GPU preformance test review I have ever seen out of AT. I am disappointed.bobsmith1492 - Friday, July 8, 2005 - link
What I get out of this is that ATI cards struggle at higher resolutions, but thrive with AA; Nvidia is the opposite.It makes sense for ATI to go for the AA since most people have smaller monitors, although higher resolution is really better all around.
dornick - Friday, July 8, 2005 - link
Thumbs up for updating with x800xl and 6800gtPastuch - Friday, July 8, 2005 - link
Canadian Graphics Card Pricing:
ATI x800xl: $329 AGP (www.canadacomputers.com) $379 PCIE (NCIX)
6800gt: $379 at NCiX if you can catch a sale.
$400 PCIE (NCIX) Basically if you want a 6800gt you have to spend $400.
X850XT: $499 (Bestbuy Sale - It just started today and until now this card cost $650)
Asus 7800GTX: $669 (NCIX sale)
ss284 - Friday, July 8, 2005 - link
BTW, x850xt's are hitting closer to the 375-400 price mark now. The 7800 is still 550-600.yacoub - Friday, July 8, 2005 - link
"...it has been a constant struggle to ... properly render resolutions above 1600x1200 on analog monitors."Everyone should be running LCDs for high resolutions these days anyway. Much easier on the eyes and weigh maybe a tenth as much as some giant friggin' CRT.
Thanks for adding the X800XL and 6800GT to the comparisons, they were much desired. Now if only the tests were done on more common systems so we could actually expect to get the same FPS results as your tests (FX-55).
tgjp - Friday, July 8, 2005 - link
Just like to say, I've bought a system with 7800GTX in SLi and I am very excited about using this machine, and perhaps playing battlefield2.