High End Performance Tests
And now, we come to the extreme tests. Unfortunately, we couldn't push our tests beyond 2048x1536 this time around, so the 7800 GTX SLI setup is still not stretching its legs to its full potential (which is extremely impressive). For our 1920x1440 test (a little larger than HDTV's 1080p), the trend continues from the previous tests. This time around, we see that the SLI setup is steadily becoming less CPU bound under our AA/AF test. Without turning these features on, we do still bump into the CPU limit, however.
And our current highest end test, 2048x1536 still shows an incredible frame rate under the 7800 GTX SLI. Increasing AA/AF settings still can't hurt it too much, and even the single 7800 GTX is playable with all the options on at the highest resolution test that we ran. The 6800 Ultra and X850 XT are only playable at this resolution without AA enabled (though, the ATI part comes closer to being playable). It should go without saying that the mid-range cards are unplayable here.
For high end cards paired with a monitor that can handle it, 1920x1440 offers good AA performance. If the investment in a 7800 GTX seems worth it, nothing looks better than 2048x1536 with 4xAA/AF. Oddly enough, we can still see the difference between aliased and antialiased game play at these huge resolutions. Of course, the problem is only obvious on near vertical or near horizontal lines and is much less of an issue at huge resolutions than at, say, 1024x768.
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saiku - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
The choice of cards to benchmark always baffles me.Where are the mainstream cards such as 9800 Pro? What percentage of Anandtech's audience uses 7800 GTX or an SLI setup? Why not focus on the "mainstream" cards such as the 9800s, the 6800GT and non spend tons of stats on $1000 video card setups.
I love reading anandtech stuff but their choice of cards for benchmarks drives me nuts.
JustAnAverageGuy - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
Would have liked to see the 9800 Pro and 800XL included.DerekWilson - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
Sorry, I was mixing up my game engines there -- you are correct and the article has been fixed to reflect the use of the proper engine.Derek Wilson
Therms - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
The Battlefield 1942 engine had nothing to do with the Unreal Engine."When you're looking at screenshots and movies from Battlefield 1942 you cant stop noticing that it is damn beautiful; could you tell us something more about the technique behind the game? We heard that you developed your own engine, could you please tell us a little bit more about it?
The engine is named Refractor2 and is completely home made, just as it's predecessor, Refractor. The reason why we made our own engine, and didn't use any of the well known engines as say the Quake3 engine or the Unreal Tournament engine, is because of the specific demands that Battlefield 1942 has. "
http://www.gamingeye.com/english/artiklar/artikel....
CrystalBay - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
Nice article Derek,Will AT be making the AT BF2 benchmark downloadable for members ? That would be nice , then members could bench thier cards and share the results. Myself I can figure out how well my GT scales compared to Ultras.
dev0lution - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
It doesn't make much sense to include an X700 Pro over an X800XL, as I'm sure the latter is one of the more popular ATI cards.coomar - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
x700 pro is pretty much the equivalent of a 9800pro, i'm a little surprised as to a lack of the x800xl or 6800gtShadowVlican - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
a 2nd edition of this article would be appreciated (to include CPU scaling & older gfx cards)Yelapaboy - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
One thing I have noticed with my 3.2 @ 3.6 P4 with X800 XT PE main rig is that although I notice a pretty nice difference at very high res with older games and sims I don't notice that much with newer shooters that use shaders such as HL2, Doom 3, and Far Cry. For example I was almost as happy playing Far Cry at 1024x768 with 2X temporal FSAA on my old 9700Pro as 1600x1200 4X with my X800 XT PE, I can't tell much difference in HL2, Butcher Bay or Doom 3 when I go above 1280x960 on my 22" Viewsonic P225 and pretty much run them at that res. I figure my year and a half old main rig with it's year old video card easily has another year left of keeping me wildly happy although I am chomping at the bit for a dual core AMD CPU and the 7800 is certainly awesome. I feel that of the games I play only IL2 and FS2004 would give me a definitely better gaming experience with more GPU and CPU but as it is they run quite well. At any rate great article but I would have liked to see certain other cards tested.Jep4444 - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
the demo doesn't seem to want to install on my computer so i can't see how it'll run on my rig