Next up is Quake 4 which was recorded within the MCC Landing Area.  Quake 4 has an in game frame limit of 60fps.  You can see this in the graph below so what we are looking for is frames rates remaining as close as possible to this cap. 

Minimum Radeon X1950 Pro = 29 / Minimum GeForce 7900 GS = 26
Maximum Radeon X1950 Pro = 63 / Maximum GeForce 7900 GS = 63
Average Radeon X1950 Pro = 51 / Average GeForce 7900 GS = 53

Smooth play here on both cards but a minimal edge goes to the GeForce card.  It's no small wonder though since Quake 4's code leans a bit to favor the NVidia engine a bit.  We still include this bench here because regardless of how it was written, the Doom 3/Quake 4 engine is a popular one indeed.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted rounds things out.  Testing here was taken from the NFS World Loop map.  Screen resolution was set to 1600 x 1200 with all other settings (except V-Synch and FSAA) set to max. 

Minimum Radeon X1950 Pro = 29 / Minimum GeForce 7900 GS = 29
Maximum Radeon X1950 Pro = 52 / Maximum GeForce 7900 GS = 55
Average Radeon X1950 Pro = 41 / Average GeForce 7900 GS = 42

Another Ford/Chevy battle.  Pick your team - Green or Red.

Overclocking

Right out of the box, we need to remember the HIS X1950 Pro IceQ3 Turbo card is overclocked.  The default ATi speeds on the core and memory are 575MHz and 690MHz (1380MHz).  HIS's card, complete with the cooling to do it, came out of the box at 620MHz on the core and 740MHz (1480MHz) on the memory.  Using the ATi Tool we played around with overclocking both the core and memory until we found a stable ceiling.  Stable being defined as no observable visual artifacts or anomalies during gameplay at all.  As far as core speed we were able to jack things up to a healthy 665MHz.  From this lofty perch it was a disappointment to only get the memory stable at a max speed of 750MHz (1500MHz).  Real world this equated to about a 1% increase in frame rates.