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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crazyeddie - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
I would like to add that I don't understand omitting X800XL from comparisons. It's ATI's most popular mid-range video solution.yacoub - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
Add me to the list of people looking forward to a more complete article with CPU scaling and a 9800 Pro and an 800XL included in the tests.formulav8 - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
I just bought a Regular 6800 Vanilla AGP and thought/hoping that should/would be included.I am happy that mine unlocks the pipes and shader just fine! (Well, so far anyways)
I ran 3DMark03 and got 8086 with stock pipes and got 8778 with 16x6x pipes. Not to bad with a fairly slow cpu. Thats a 8% increase with no oc or anything, and with a fairly slow cpu that is bottlenecking most likely.
I will try ocing it next week when I get a cpu/mobo that will push it alittle more.
I am running a Athlon XP with 128KB L1 and 128KB L2 Cache at 2ghz. And yes, that IS the right L2 Cache numbers on this cpu :)
Are there any instructions that I can find to run my own benchmark numbers for BattleField2?? Anyone know???
Jason
pcfountain - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
And while I'm on the subject of price/performance, how about a graph of street price vs. FPS for each card, so we can see the "value" of each card visually? The more I think about what information this article *should have* presented, I come to realize that it is just fluff. The basic conclusion is that higher-priced cards get better FPS. No duh?pcfountain - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
I agree with many others, leaving the X800XL out of this roundup (and in fact EVERY X800-series card) is a HUGE oversight. The X800XL a very popular card and probably the best price/performance ratio for the high-end right now. IMO the article is useless without this comparison.dornick - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
Only the X700 and the X850XT tested in the high-end!? What about the half-dozen other cards in between?Killrose - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
Can we get off this FX-55 addiction and use a lower RANGE of CPU's to see how the game scales with a lower class CPU?A 6200 or X300 GPU being crappy is really a no-brainer. And pairing it with a world class FX-55 CPU is senceless.
L3p3rM355i4h - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
9600 and 8500 are 4 pipes.My winnie @ 2.5 1GB of RAM and 9800@ 480/375 runs 10x7 everything on high very well. No lag what so ever. Granted, I have a sign. advantage over a x700pro and a 6600gt.
Questar - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
My bad, I thought the 9800 was a four pipe card.drizek - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
i have a 6600gt, gig of ram @360, amd 3200+ and i can play it at 1600x1200 with 2xAA and medium everything else(around 40fps).from all the guides ive seen, there is a very small difference in graphics by moving to High settings from medium, but you see a big performance hit. You should tested the low/midrange cards using medium, because i doubt many people are going to crank it up to high and then play at 1024x768.
here are some screenshots comparing low/medium/high settings
http://www.tweakguides.com/BF2_5.html