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3D Performance with Battlefield 2 Demo Part 2: Mainstream Cards June 21, 2005 Brandon Sandman Bell |
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Summary: Last week we took a look at the Battlefield 2 demo's performance with the latest and greatest high-end cards, today we're evaluating performance with a handful of mainstream cards. We've gathered ATI's RADEON X600 XT, X700 PRO and X800 256MB, as well as GeForce 6800 and GeForce 6600 GT. Our goal? Figure out which cards delivered the best performance and image quality. See the results inside!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 8 ) |
The contestants
In the meantime, today we wanted to go over BF2 demo performance with more affordable hardware. After all, while we all dream of high-end hardware, not everyone is willing to shell out $400 or $500 for a video card. Most gamers on a budget instead opt for the cards one rung from the top, these cards usually ship with most of the same features found in higher end offerings, only they can be found for $100-$200 less.
NVIDIA’s GeForce 6800 is one popular example of this. The GeForce 6800 shares most of the core components as its more expensive brothers, the GeForce 6800 GT and GeForce 6800 Ultra, in fact, as we outlined in our Unlocking the GeForce 6800 article, the AGP GeForce 6800 is built on the same manufacturing line as these cards, only NVIDIA locks one of the 6800’s vertex units and one pixel quad, leaving it with four fewer functional functional pixel pipelines (12 total). GeForce 6800 cards also ship with lower clock speeds. But with a few quick modifications, these cards can be modified to perform more closely to their costlier counterparts.
The RADEON X800 is ATI’s closest equivalent to the GeForce 6800. The chip is based on the same core as ATI’s 16-pixel pipeline RADEON X800 XL, R430, only ATI disables four of its pixel pipelines, for a total of 12 functional units, just like the GeForce 6800. Also like the GeForce 6800, RADEON X800 features a 256-bit memory interface. The 256MB version of these cards sells for about $250, which is half the price of the RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition we tested with last week.
At the lower end of the mainstream segment lie the GeForce 6600 GT and RADEON X700 PRO. These cards share similar configurations, with 8 pipes and a 128-bit GDDR3 memory interface, only the GeForce 6600 GT ships with higher clock speeds and of course NVIDIA is quick to tout their shader model 3.0 support.
For legacy’s sake, we also threw in a few tests with ATI’s older 4-pipe X600 XT. Those of you with RADEON 9600 XT/PRO and RADEON 9500 PRO cards will want to follow the X600 XT scores closely to see how your card compares. We also included the results from last week whenever possible.
| Image Quality | Page:: ( 2 / 8 ) |
Also, since the cards we’re testing today don’t boast the robust memory subsystem as the high-end cards, we included 2xAA image quality results. This is the AA setting gamers with these cards will most likely play at, as 2xAA delivers good IQ without sacrificing too much performance. Let’s start with AA turned off first:
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Now 2xAA:
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While both manufacturers results look good, we’ve still got to give the nod to ATI’s 2xAA mode. The best areas to look at again are the antenna on the right of the screen and the top of the bunker in front of you:
RADEON X800 2xAA
GeForce 6800 2xAA
RADEON X800 2xAA
GeForce 6800 2xAA
4xAA:
Things tighten up under 4xAA mode:
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Looking at the antenna though, the X800 card does a slightly better job at removing the jaggies:
RADEON X800 4xAA
GeForce 6800 4xAA
The difference isn’t as clear-cut though when you focus on the top of the bunker:
RADEON X800 4xAA
GeForce 6800 4xAA
Anisotropic filtering
Again, AF is probably the most subjective topic when it comes to image quality – everyone seems to have a different opinion of what looks best. Therefore we’ll provide the images so you can decide:
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| Test Systems | Page:: ( 3 / 8 ) |
System Setup
AMD Athlon 64 4000+
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
1GB OCZ DDR400 SDRAM
ATI RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition
ATI RADEON X800 XL
ATI RADEON X800 256MB
ATI RADEON X700 PRO 256MB
ATI RADEON X600 XT 256MB
Driver version CATALYST 5.6
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 PCI-E 256MB
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT 128MB
Driver version 77.30
250GB Maxtor Hard Drive Maxline III SATA Hard Drive w/16MB Cache
Windows XP Professional SP1
DirectX 9.0c
Benchmarks
Battlefield 2 Demo
| BF2 Performance | Page:: ( 4 / 8 ) |
Battlefield 2 – Direct3D
| Battlefield 2 Performance 1280x1024x32 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| GeForce 6800 Ultra | 67 | 84 |
| GeForce 6800 GT | 60 | 76 |
| GeForce 6800 | 46 | 55 |
| GeForce 6600 GT | 46 | 55 |
| RADEON X850 XT PE | 72 | 95 |
| RADEON X800 XL | 58 | 75 |
| RADEON X800 | 44 | 53 |
| RADEON X700 PRO | 39 | 46 |
| RADEON X600 XT | 21 | 26 |
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| 2xAA | Page:: ( 5 / 8 ) |
Battlefield 2 – Direct3D
| Battlefield 2 Performance 1024x768x32 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| GeForce 6800 | 52 | 61 |
| GeForce 6600 GT | 50 | 59 |
| RADEON X800 | 51 | 61 |
| RADEON X700 PRO 128MB | 45 | 54 |
| RADEON X600 XT | 27 | 30 |
| ||
| 2xAA/8xAF | Page:: ( 6 / 8 ) |
Battlefield 2 – Direct3D
| Battlefield 2 Performance 1024x768x32 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| GeForce 6800 | 49 | 56 |
| GeForce 6600 GT | 46 | 54 |
| RADEON X800 | 31 | 50 |
| RADEON X700 PRO | 27 | 42 |
| ||
| 4xAA | Page:: ( 7 / 8 ) |
Battlefield 2 – Direct3D
| Battlefield 2 Performance 1280x1024x32 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| GeForce 6800 Ultra | 55 | 65 |
| GeForce 6800 GT | 50 | 60 |
| GeForce 6800 | 33 | 38 |
| GeForce 6600 GT | 30 | 36 |
| RADEON X850 XT PE | 55 | 77 |
| RADEON X800 XL | 50 | 60 |
| RADEON X800 | 36 | 41 |
| RADEON X700 PRO | 31 | 34 |
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| Conclusion | Page:: ( 8 / 8 ) |
At the higher end of the mainstream spectrum, ATI’s RADEON X800 256MB put up a very strong showing against the GeForce 6800. Each card won their fair share of tests, with the X800 edging out the GeForce 6800 in 4xAA and 2xAA modes, while the GeForce 6800 clearly outperformed the X800 with 2xAA/8xAF. We honestly questioned if the GeForce cards were running AF properly, double and even triple checking our results, but sure enough, the images represented in our AF screenshots on page two were consistent with the visuals displayed during our 2xAA/8xAF testing. It appears that the GeForce cards are just doing a better job at handling AF at this point.
Of course, keep in mind that we’re running the beta NVIDIA driver provided with the BF2 demo, ForceWare 77.30. While we were running CATALYST AI at the standard setting found in CATALYST 5.6, we have a feeling that ATI’s driver team hasn’t had enough time to implement texture optimizations into BF2 just yet, so ATI’s performance will likely improve in future CATALYST releases.
On the lower end of the scale, the GeForce 6600 GT clearly outperformed the RADEON X700 PRO 256MB, sweeping all tests.
We’ve still got to give the AA image quality nod to ATI, although both cards are close at 4xAA. Since GeForce FX, NVIDIA’s come a long way in this regard, so ATI better not rest on their laurels.
So there you have it, our preview on BF2 performance. Now we’re eager to get started on testing with the final game! Be on the lookout for those results shortly…