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3D Performance with Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory High-end cards April 01, 2005 Brandon Sandman Bell |
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Summary: Which card is faster in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, the RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition or GeForce 6800 Ultra? What does HDR look like and do the 3.0 shaders Ubisoft has implemented look any better or bring any performance improvements over older shader instructions? All these topics and more are discussed in Part 1 of our 3D Performance with Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory article. Read the answers inside!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 12 ) |
The plot is a bit different this time around. The year is 2007 and Japan has determined that recent information warfare attacks may have been caused by a foreign government(s) or a new terrorist cell. Tensions are rising between China, Japan, and North Korea as Sam is sent in to sort out what’s going on. You’ll be equipped with some new gadgets, including your handy SC-20K assault rifle, which has been updated in Chaos Theory, as well as your trusty combat knife.
Unlike Pandora Tomorrow, which was based on the same graphics engine as the original Splinter Cell, Ubi uses a newer version of Epic’s Unreal engine for Chaos Theory, just like Gearboxes Brothers In Arms: Road To Hill 30. In terms of complexity, think of the engine as somewhere between UT 2004 and Unreal Engine 3. As a result, just like BIA, Chaos Theory requires a DirectX 8 graphics card. If you don’t have a programmable graphics card, you’ll have to upgrade in order to play Chaos Theory (fortunately, most gamers have GeForce3 or better graphics cards by now).
Shader models supported
Once you get past the game’s silly installation routine (for some ridiculously weird reason the game ships with two different CD keys, one on the back of the manual and a second poorly printed key inside the case, not to mention a CD authentication routine that loads each time you start up the game, taking a few additional seconds to complete) you’ll be greeted by the game’s main menu. Here ATI enthusiasts with DX9 cards will be disappointed to learn that the game only runs with 1.1 shaders, as Chaos Theory only provides support for shader model 1.1 and shader model 3.0, which was first introduced by NVIDIA’s GeForce 6 series of graphics cards. If you recall the original Splinter Cell, Ubisoft provided a more advanced shadow buffer mode exclusively for NVIDIA users.
Fortunately, the game still looks great in 1.1 shader mode. As we discovered in Far Cry last year, games can look just as good using older 1.1 shaders. If you recall, it was initially believed that Far Cry extensively used 2.0 shaders for many of its beautiful scenery, including its highly admired water. We were the first site to break the story that Far Cry used 1.1 shaders for most of its advanced effects, much to everyone’s dismay. Eventually CryTek added support for shader models 2.0b and 3.0, but these newer shaders were used to improve performance, not to enhance image quality.
If you have a high-end GeForce 6800 or 6600 card, you’ll see a few other exclusives in the shader model 3.0 portion of the game’s menu, including high dynamic range lighting (with tone mapping), parallax mapping (an advanced form of displacement mapping), and high quality soft shadows.
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For this article, we wanted to focus on the performance of ATI and NVIDIA’s high-end cards, so we’ve compared them head-to-head using the game’s 1.1 shader mode. We’ve also run tests with HDR turned on as well as shader model 3.0, so we can see the performance enhancements the newer shader instructions brings. Let’s first take a look at the game’s AA quality, and a few of the other eye candy features Ubisoft has included in Chaos Theory.
| Image Quality | Page:: ( 2 / 12 ) |
Editor’s Note: As it takes place at night, the environments within Chaos Theory are very dark. In order to provide more helpful screenshots that are easier to see minute details, we’ve cranked up the gamma in the following screenshots. As a result, in some of the darker images, colors are over-saturated.
Anti-alising
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is a very dark game. Remember, as a spy you’d have a hard time sneaking through corridors in the middle of broad daylight. As a result, AA doesn’t play as large of a role as it does in other games. In fact, in the first Splinter Cell title Ubisoft didn’t provide AA support. Both ATI and NVIDIA cards offer crisp images with AA on:
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| <% print_image("06"); %> | <% print_image("07"); %> |
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1.1 vs 3.0 Shader mode and HDR
Next lets take a look at a few different environments rendered with shader model 1.1 versus 3.0.
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Looking at the images, it’s hard to spot any differences in the water between the two shader modes. How does HDR lighting look though, let’s see:
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Clearly we can see the greater intensity HDR lighting brings to Chaos Theory. In the second batch of shots you can see Sam’s cheekbones more clearly as the green hue of light from Sam’s IR goggles shines on his face. Images 15 and 16 show clear differences as well.
Knowing this, the final question we had was if 3.0 shaders produce lighting superior to 1.1 shaders or not:
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In the image above you can clearly see that in the 3.0 shader mode, the light is brighter than when running in 1.1 mode.
| Test systems | Page:: ( 3 / 12 ) |
System Setup
AMD Athlon 64 3800+
ECS KN1 Extreme
1GB OCZ EL DDR400 Platinum Edition Rev 2
ATI RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition
ATI RADEON X850 XT
ATI RADEON X800 XL
Driver version CAT 5.3
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT
Driver version 71.84 final
250GB Maxtor Hard Drive Maxline III SATA Hard Drive w/16MB Cache
Windows XP Professional SP1
DirectX 9.0c
Benchmarks
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory 1.1
Notes
We’re running with the default demo included with the game for our first performance article so you can compare our scores to your system. Future articles will use custom demos.
| SM 1.1 vs 3.0 Performance | Page:: ( 4 / 12 ) |
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory – Direct3D
| Chaos Theory Performance 1280x1024 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| GeForce 6800 Ultra SM 3.0 | 33.8 | 155.6 |
| GeForce 6800 Ultra SM 1.1 | 32 | 160.5 |
| GeForce 6800 GT SM 3.0 | 30.1 | 146.4 |
| GeForce 6800 GT SM 1.1 | 28.2 | 154.8 |
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Notes
In order to ensure the cleanest comparison between 1.1 and 3.0 instructions as possible, we disabled HDR rendering, parallax mapping, and soft shadows.
| SM1.1vs3.0 4xAA/8xAF | Page:: ( 5 / 12 ) |
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory – Direct3D
| Chaos Theory Performance 1280x1024 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| GeForce 6800 Ultra SM 3.0 | 24.5 | 110.6 |
| GeForce 6800 Ultra SM 1.1 | 23.1 | 116.8 |
| GeForce 6800 GT SM 3.0 | 21.7 | 99 |
| GeForce 6800 GT SM 1.1 | 20.5 | 105 |
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| HDR Performance | Page:: ( 6 / 12 ) |
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory – Direct3D
| Chaos Theory ATI vs. NVIDIA | Page:: ( 7 / 12 ) |
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory – Direct3D
| Chaos Theory Performance 1280x1024 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| RADEON X850 XT PE | 38.8 | 158.4 |
| RADEON X850 XT | 36.8 | 157.7 |
| RADEON X800 XL | 29.9 | 156.3 |
| GeForce 6800 Ultra | 32 | 160.5 |
| GeForce 6800 GT | 28.2 | 154.8 |
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| 4xAA | Page:: ( 8 / 12 ) |
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory – Direct3D
| Chaos Theory Performance 1280x1024 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| RADEON X850 XT PE | 31.6 | 153.3 |
| RADEON X850 XT | 29.7 | 153.1 |
| RADEON X800 XL | 24.8 | 130.7 |
| GeForce 6800 Ultra | 24.8 | 124.7 |
| GeForce 6800 GT | 22.1 | 111.6 |
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| 4xAA Performance Hit | Page:: ( 9 / 12 ) |
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory – Direct3D
| 4xAA/8xAF | Page:: ( 10 / 12 ) |
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory – Direct3D
| Chaos Theory Performance 1280x1024 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| RADEON X850 XT PE | 30 | 153.8 |
| RADEON X850 XT | 28.3 | 152.8 |
| RADEON X800 XL | 23.5 | 130.2 |
| GeForce 6800 Ultra | 23.1 | 116.8 |
| GeForce 6800 GT | 20.5 | 105 |
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| 8xAF Performance Hit | Page:: ( 11 / 12 ) |
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory – Direct3D
| Conclusion | Page:: ( 12 / 12 ) |
Of course, no self respecting GeForce 6800 owner would run Chaos Theory in the 1.1 shader mode, as Ubisoft has implemented performance enhancements in the 3.0 mode. The performance improvements weren’t as great as what we saw with Far Cry last year, we witnessed performance gains of between 5-8% in our testing, with the final result varying based on screen resolution used and the AA/AF level applied. This wouldn’t have been enough for the GeForce 6800 Ultra to overtake the X850 XT PE, or the 6800 GT to outpace the X800 XL in any of our tests involving some combination of 4xAA, but it does close the gap somewhat.
Unfortunately, Ubisoft has decided not to provide a 2.0 or 2.0b shader mode for RADEON 9500 (or greater) and X800 users. Hardware shadow mapping was also disabled on the X850 cards we tested. This is another performance-enhancing feature Chaos Theory supports, but the readme mentions that it’s supported on RADEON 9500+ cards, so perhaps this was caused by a driver issue (we disabled it for the NVIDIA cards to ensure accurate results). In any case, it’s very disappointing to see a developer provide so many features for one particular brand and not another. Eye candy features such as parallax mapping could have been thrown in for ATI users if a 2.0 mode would have been provided by Ubisoft.
Clearly shader model 3.0 is the way of the future, we don’t dispute that. But with the large amount of 2.0-capable hardware out there, it seems strange to skip this mode entirely. Fortunately the 1.1 mode still looks quite good, as we’ve shown you in our screenshots, but it’s never a good thing for gamers when one group of users receives preferential treatment ahead of others. CryTek set a beautiful example of how it should be done, providing additional features for both ATI and NVIDIA card owners in follow-up patches to Far Cry. Hopefully Ubi will get on the boat and do the same.
Until then though, the high-end GeForce 6800 cards are arguably the better solution for Chaos Theory, simply because they provide more display options. If you want the fastest Chaos Theory card though, ATI’s RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition should be the card for you.