Overall Summary:
ATI set out to improve shader performance and they have been very successful in their goal. We are very impressed with the performance improvements we have seen today over the Radeon X1800 XT. We are most impressed with the F.E.A.R. and Need for Speed Most Wanted improvements. We know that in F.E.A.R., 1600x1200 is not an easy resolution to achieve with all the effects in the game maxed out. F.E.A.R. does per pixel everything—lights, shadows, etc.— and because of this, higher resolutions equate to more pixels, which makes it harder it is for the video card to render. Until now, we haven’t had a single video card that was able to run F.E.A.R. smoothly at 1600x1200 with 2X AA. Well, the X1900 XT and XTX can not only run it at that resolution, but they can also run it with Adaptive AA and High Quality AF enabled to boot.
We also saw a very large improvement in Need for Speed Most Wanted. Until now, the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 was holding the crown for performance in that game. With everything enabled, the game uses a lot of shaders and an HDR-like bloom effect, which just eats up video card performance—especially at 1600x1200 with AA. The Radeon X1800 XT was playable at 1280x1024 with 4X AA. With the new Radeon X1900 XT and XTX, we found 1600x1200 to be playable with 4X AA, as well as High Quality AF with frame rates above 30 FPS. That’s a large image quality improvement.
Those were not the only two games where we saw a performance improvement; the X1900 XT and XTX performed better than the X1800 XT in all the games we used in this evaluation. This better performance allowed us to improve the image quality either by raising the resolution or AA level, or by enabling Adaptive AA and/or High Quality AF. These features can greatly improve your gaming experience, and the X1900 XT and XTX can do them well.
Image Quality:
In fact, we found that the High Quality AF option is one of those features that you can simply enable with the X1900 XT and XTX. ItÂ’s a given! ItÂ’s the year 2006 now; we are at a point where Anisotropic filtering should be a given, and it should be a given that it operate at the highest visual quality possible.
Editorializing a little bit here, I would like to see the Anisotropic slider in the control panel and in games disappear. There really should be only 2 options regarding Anisotropic filtering: There should be “Off” and there should be “On.” When you turn it on, it should operate in every game at 16X with High Quality AF. There is no reason not to have AF enabled in today’s games with today’s video cards. The only quality setting we should really be worrying about these days is anti-aliasing. I hope that one day we see AF as a given where it is always on, at the highest level, at the best quality.
As it stands right now, however, the X1900 XT and XTX can run with the highest AF level that the game supports with High Quality AF enabled. There are a lot of games where having this angle independent quality setting helps a lot. The games it most helps in are games that have outdoor scenes where there is topology that has a lot of angles. We find this characteristic in Call of Duty 2, Need for Speed Most Wanted, Battlefield 2, EverQuest II, and many other similar games that need the best filtering quality. EverQuest II is a good example of this because it is a game where you stand around a lot performing tasks instead of focusing on other players. In these types of games, you are more likely to notice texture quality as you move throughout the game.
Shader Performance:
If F.E.A.R. and Need for Speed Most Wanted are any indication of the shader intensive games we will see this year or next, then the Radeon X1900 XT and XTX seem ready to handle them. We do have some fears though (no pun intended) about the performance. While the new cards from ATI provide a big improvement in some games over the Radeon X1800 XT, it is not a big improvement over the GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB video card.
It is quite clear that the X1800 XT is slower than the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 and the 7800 GTX 512 provides a better gaming experience. With the new Radeon X1900 XT and XTX, the performance these cards provide is now equal to that of the 7800 GTX 512 in most games. F.E.A.R. really is the only game in which the X1900 XT and XTX dominated the 7800 GTX 512. The X1900 XT is really what the X1800 XT should have been; it has just now come up to par with the 7800 GTX 512.
If the rumors are true about the specifications for NVIDIA’s GeForce 7 series refresh product—we may see the X1900 XT and XTX being trounced in the latest games by NVIDIA’s next release. Competition is good, that is for sure, and it benefits the consumer greatly. We are sure ATI is aware of this also and maybe they can squeeze some more performance out of the X1900 XT and XTX with new drivers. We know they have a very efficient and programmable memory controller that can be individually tweaked for games to provide better memory management. Hopefully, ATI will continue on this path and figure out the best way their GPU can run these games and make it happen.
Like we said, F.E.A.R. may just be the first game that really shows what the X1900 XT and XTX can do. We hope to see more games like this that illustrate the hardwareÂ’s full capability.
Fancy Features:
That leads us into the next topic, which are the new features ATI is pushing with the X1800 and X1900 series like Dynamic Flow Control and Fetch4. These things are great, but they really are transparent to the gamer. Simply having these features supported in hardware does not provide instant gameplay experience improvements for the gamer. In fact, the game content developer must specifically code their game to take advantage of these features. Now, the Radeon X1800 and X1900 are supposed to handle Dynamic Flow Control very well allowing for performance improvements and easier coding. Fetch4 is also supposed to help with this for shadows. However, we simply havenÂ’t seen any games right now that are using this to provide a benefit to the gameplay experience. We are very truly content limited right now. There are all these great features in the Radeon X1900 XT and XTX, but there are currently no games that are using them. ATI assures us that game content developers are working as we speak to implement these features in upcoming titles. We hear that CryEngine 2 (the next engine being used for the sequel to FarCry) might support Dynamic Flow Control.
2006 has just arrived and it is very hard to get a picture of what the gamescape will be like this year. Our hope is to see graphics features that benefit gameplay. Sure, there are a lot of cool effects they can put into games these days—HDR is a popular one right now— but if these effects are just haphazardly thrown in just to say they support it, then what is the point? We want to see these effects actually benefit the gamer and play into the whole gameplay experience. We want things like HDR light to affect the gameplay, give us spots where we can hide in the shade and not be seen, or give us spots that simply blind the other player with HDR sunlight giving us the advantage to take them out. Dynamic Flow Control, Fetch4, HDR, etc. all sound nice on paper, but they really mean nothing to gamers until they are used to positively influence the gameplay experience.
The Bottom Line:
The bottom line is that ATI has produced an impressive refresh to the X1800 XT. We are very happy to say that ATI has informed us that production is not a problem with this X1900 GPU and that these video cards are everywhere now for people to purchase. Timely availability has really been ATI’s main problem recently. ATI had some very impressive technology in the recent past; it was just that no one could buy it in the right timeframe. It seems ATI has turned the tables and provided the hardest launch we have ever seen—video cards that were actually available and in people’s hands before the card was even announced! While not official, that’s as hard as it gets folks; let’s hope ATI can maintain these hard launches and provide products the day of launch.
If you want the fastest performing video cards right now that provide the highest level of image quality in games, it doesnÂ’t get any better than the Radeon X1900 XT and XTX. You get High Quality AF, Adaptive AA, HDR with AA, and very fast shader performance. If you have been waiting to play F.E.A.R. at very high quality settings, your wait is over; the Radeon X1900 XT/XTX is the card for you.
