FiringSquad: Home of the Hardcore Gamer - Games, Hardware, Reviews and NewsSubmit your own or view users' CPU overclocking results!

  
 Home   News   THE MATRIX   Deals   Hardware   Games   Features   Media   Products   Forums   FS China 
AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Home : Hardware : Video Cards : 3D Performance with Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Part 2 ATI Mainstream Cards
» Join the Greatest Gaming Community NOW! (It's free)

Already a member? Login
 



Random Gallery >> 
Click to view high-res Image!
ARMA 3 February 2012 Screenshots [4] (0)

The Nvidia "Crank That S#!T Up" Quiz Show, Part 2 (6) by mohawkade
Crank That S#!t Up! ENTRY :) (2) by CamoDaGreat
My crank that S#!t Up entry! (13) by zin_onos
Crank that SH#!t Up Contest Entry (10) by Boltshot
HOW I CRANK THAT S#!T UP!! (4) by nvidia4life
CRANG That S#!T Up! (15) by ElwinRansom
Crank that s#!t up to 11!!! (14) by jarrodthome
The Nvidia "Crank That S#!T Up" Quiz Show! (21) by mohawkade
Crankin' it up today... and tomorrow! (8) by Slipdisk
My crank that S#!T up entry (9) by iamcj

More Blogs >>




3D Performance with Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Part 2 ATI Mainstream Cards
April 14, 2005   Brandon Sandman Bell > [View My Other Articles]
Product Info | User Reviews | Article Images | Image Gallery | Comments | Forum Thread
Introduction


After taking a look at Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory’s performance with high-end cards earlier this month, we’re now here today to evaluate the performance of Ubi’s latest shooter with less expensive cards. After all, we can’t all afford the latest $500 cards right?

So why are we only testing ATI cards today? Simple, NVIDIA’s only a few hours away from releasing newer ForceWare drivers. We were just wrapping up GeForce 6600 GT testing when we learned this. Rather than post results with an outdated driver, we figured it was better to just post the ATI results now, and write a follow-up article with the NVIDIA cards once we’ve had enough time to properly test the cards with the newer driver.

Testing changes

If you recall our first Chaos Theory article, hardware shadow mapping wasn’t available for RADEON X850/X800 XL cards, even though the hardware was capable of supporting this feature. As a result, we decided to turn it off for all cards.

Fortunately we can report that ATI was able to resolve this issue with the release of CATALYST 5.4 last week, so ATI users now have access to this performance-enhancing setting and you will want to turn it on (as we did in our testing). Unfortunately however, there’s still no support for 2.0 or 2.0b shaders, and based on all indications these shaders won’t be added by Ubisoft anytime in the near future, if ever. Instead Ubisoft is likely hard at work on preparing Splinter Cell 4 for Microsoft’s upcoming next-generation Xbox console.

Another change we’ve made in our testing is turning down the shadow resolution from high quality shadows to medium quality. We ran a few quick tests with the RADEON X800 XL to show the performance difference:










As you can see, turning down just the shadow quality can have a significant impact on performance; at 1024x768 with AA and AF disabled, performance improves by 15%, with a 10% improvement under 4xAA/8xAF at the same resolution. The performance benefits are even more significant on lower-end cards.

The final change we made is in our demo used for testing. Whereas in our first article we relied on the stock demo that ships with Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, from now on we’re going to use custom demos.

    How we tested Next!
Blog + Share: Digg Del.icio.us Reddit SU furl • More: AddThis Social Bookmark Button
Send This Article to a Friend!  
Table of Contents
  Print Entire Article  

MATRIX CONTENT » RANDOM MEDIA BLOG More Blogs >>
No ratings yet
» Please rate this
Read this Media-Blog entry!» My Entry For The Contest. (6)
by D4rk Force (1) Talk with this user on their Shout Box (My other blogs) Posted 19 months ago


 Latest Headlines
PC Game Sales for Tuesday, February 14th (0)
Ravaged dev diaries show the indie shooter's vehicles (0)
New Mass Effect 3 teaser trailer, "Take Earth Back" (0)
Crusader Kings 2 launch trailer sets us up for intrigue (0)
New Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion teaser trailer (0)
Today's News >>
Today's Siteseeing >>


 Table of Contents


FiringSquad is powered by... Back to Top Site MapContact UsAdvertise With Us Privacy StatementAbout Us  
News RSSSiteseeing RSSArticle RSS   © 1998-2012 FS Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved