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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jkostans - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
Yeah the 9800 pro runs fine at 1024x768 with graphics high on my barton 3000+ (2.2ghz). Oh yeah and a gig of pc2700 ram. I would compare the framerate to CS:S but a tad slower in some areas. Oh and for people wanting to find out how their computer performs, there is a demo available. Yeah it's 500mb but it's good.Xenoterranos - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
Where's the Voodo 3 2000/K62 test setup? Come on guys, cater to the poor b@stards out here... :pWileCoyote - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
For you 9800 Pro owners this game runs pretty well on a 3ghz p4 with 2gb of ram.I run BF2 at 1024x768, medium, 4xAA and it runs very smooth. I'm sure you could even bump up some of the medium settings to high.
Aikouka - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
#16:I mean bias as in a statistical bias, not a personal preference.
Jep4444 - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
how bout we seem some tests from either an X600Pro/XT or a 9600Pro/XT, these cards are extremely common and personally i'd like to know how my card fairs in BF2, i don't want to have to wait until the X550 comes out(basically a 9600Pro with 500mhz RAM instead of 600mhz) to find out how my card should performyacoub - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
Oh I see now. FX-55 system. Heh.yacoub - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
Sweet so if I get an X800XL card for around $300 (the most anyone should have to pay for a GPU to play the latest games smoothly), I can just about handle 1280x1024 with 4xAA/High quality at around 50fps. That's not toooooooo bad.Oh wait, I wonder what the rest of the test system's specs are (I didn't see them on any of the pages). If it's like an FX-57 or something then that's not exactly promising for the majority of us running 3000+-3700+ A64 systems who will clearly experience a bit lower performance. =/
Avalon - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
#18,An X700 does not have twice the pipes of a 9800 pro, it has the same exact ammount. It also is not clocked much higher. The x700pro is clocked at 425/860 compared to a 9800pro at 380/680. As you can see, core speeds are fairly close, and memory speeds...well, the 9800pro is 256bit while the x700pro is 128bit, so despite the clockspeed advantage, the x700 should actually have less memory bandwidth in the end. This puts the cards roughly equal.
OrSin - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
the x700pro is clocked a little higher but has the same number of pipes and only 128 bus where the 9800pro has 256 bus. In truth the 9800pro is faster then the x700 and might be about the same as the 700pro or just little faster.coldpower27 - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
Questar, X700 is the RV410 chip which is 8X1/6 vs the the 9800 Pro R350 chip with 8X1/4. Though the X700 Pro has the advanatge of being clcoked a little higher.The X700 Pro should be close to the 6600 GT. And certainly does not have twice the pixel pipes or vertex pipes of 9800 Pro.