NFS: Carbon

Need For Speed: Carbon is a new game to our benchmarking that we are going to try for a while.  It is much more intensive than NFS: Most Wanted so I'm hoping it will give us some growth room as VGA performance increases.  All settings within the game menu were set to maximum with the exception of FSAA which was set to 0x.  Here are our results of a three minute game play snap shot.

Minimum X1950XT - 35  /  Minimum HD2900XT - 42
Maximum X1950XT - 48  /  Maximum HD2900XT - 70
Average X1950XT - 40  /  Average HD2900XT - 55

The next generation Radeon shows itself standing head and shoulders over the X1950XT.  Keeping everything the same but turning on FSAA to 4x let's see how performance is impacted.

Minimum X1950XT - 31  /  Minimum HD2900XT - 34
Maximum X1950XT - 41  /  Maximum HD2900XT - 46
Average X1950XT - 36  /  Average HD2900XT - 42

Now this was a huge surprise.  The HD2900XT continues to outperform the X1950XT but the margin has shrunk quite a bit.  The X1950XT wants to flex it muscles much more so here than the HD2900XT does proportionately.

NFS: Most Wanted

Our old standby for a while now is NFS: Most Wanted.  Again all settings are set to max except FSAA which is at 0xFSAA.  Resolution is 1600x1200.

Minimum X1950XT - 43  /  Minimum HD2900XT - 46
Maximum X1950XT - 68  /  Maximum HD2900XT - 81
Average X1950XT - 54  /  Average HD2900XT - 62

A sizeable performance difference within NFS: Most Wanted as well but not quite as much as we were hoping for with the hot off the line R600.  Maxing out all settings, let's see if we see the same relationship with FSAA as we did in NFS: Carbon.

Minimum X1950XT - 32  /  Minimum HD2900XT - 35
Maximum X1950XT - 51  /  Maximum HD2900XT - 54
Average X1950XT - 39  /  Average HD2900XT - 44

Same basic engine so it's no big surprise to see the same shrinking gap with FSAA being turned on.  Our original intentions were to look at FSAA within only a couple of games but with the results thus far, we are going to add them in across the board.  Let's shift to Quake 4.
 

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Pg 1 - Introduction
Pg 2 - The Card
Pg 3 - The Card / Test Bed
Pg 4 - NFS: Carbon / NFS: MW
Pg 5 - Quake 4 / STALKER
Pg 6 - Image Quality / Conclusion