Modern Games and Modern GPUs: The Grand Clash

The Holiday season is approaching and a lot of people will be playing the latest games during their spare time. X-bit labs has decided to help you choosing a graphics card in the range from below $99 and up to $649 for the latest and most demanding games that are available today.

This article is dedicated to the graphics cards that are relevant to the current situation and the latest games, which is why we do not test relatively outdated titles like Doom III or Far Cry and also do not touch upon multi-GPU setups, as it is obvious that due to lack of competition multi-GPU NVIDIA GeForce-based solutions are the fastest and the most expensive today. However, our “mega-review” that covers loads of games and graphics boards is on track to be released early next year and it will include not only currently unrivalled NVIDIA’s SLI platform, but also ATI’s CrossFire platform featuring a brand-new ATI GPU that is supposed to be released massively in mid- or late-January, 2006.

Full review: xbitlabs.com

List of graphics cards that were in the test:

High-End:

• ATI RADEON X1800 XT
• ATI RADEON X1800 XL
• ATI RADEON X850 XT PE
• NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 512
• NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX
• NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT

Performance-Mainstream:

• ATI RADEON X800 XL
• ATI RADEON X800 GTO
• ATI RADEON X1600 XT
• NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT
• NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GS
• NVIDIA GeForce 6800

Mainstream and Entry-Level:

• ATI RADEON X800 GT
• ATI RADEON X700 PRO
• ATI RADEON X700
• ATI RADEON X1300 PRO
• NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT
• NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GDDR2
• NVIDIA GeForce 6600

I jut waded my way through all of that, & my conclusion is ;- 'the usual blind you with benchmarks & rig the tests' pooh ! :eek2:

I can sum it up a whole lot better & quicker than 27 pages !! :rolleyes:

Just make sure if you are buying a new video card for christmas that you at least make sure its definately dx9 hardware compliant, or in future you may have trouble playing the latest games as you'll have to rely on software support from dx9 doing translations & whacking the hell out of performance.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by confus-ed

I jut waded my way through all of that, & my conclusion is ;- 'the usual blind you with benchmarks & rig the tests' pooh ! :eek2:

I can sum it up a whole lot better & quicker than 27 pages !! :rolleyes:

Just make sure if you are buying a new video card for christmas that you at least make sure its definately dx9 hardware compliant, or in future you may have trouble playing the latest games as you'll have to rely on software support from dx9 doing translations & whacking the hell out of performance.

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All new cards (i.e. ever since the ATi 9xxx/nVidia 5xxx series, which have been out for a long time now) are DX9 compliant, so thats no worry.

I am planning to get (just 1) 7800GT or GTX for my next pc.
The concept of SLI doesnt justify another card for me, and it becomes just too pricey.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TechZ

All new cards (i.e. ever since the ATi 9xxx/nVidia 5xxx series, which have been out for a long time now) are DX9 compliant, so thats no worry..

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Oooo .. I'm not so sure about that at all - I know an awful lot of Nvidia cards have been claimed to have full dx9 hardware compliance & don't really at all, but are doing the work via software tweaks either in games/aps or via dx middleware ..

This is tricky to make a call on, as I just don't believe sales blurb anymore whatsoever & there's more techowhatsit about this than even I care to think about for too long - my 'best punt' at this (as I'm none too sure at all) is that to be 'certain' you want an Nvidia FX6'whatever' or an ATI 9600 or above :)..

(But I'm too lazy to go googling for stuff to back that up fully ! :eek2: )

One of the best test for full DX9 compliance, is Battlefield 2, my Ti4600 isnt DX9 compliant, as as such I cannot play BF2. All nVidia 5xxx & ATi 9xxx series cards and above can play it :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TechZ

... All nVidia 5xxx & ATi 9xxx series cards..

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Stop saying that - its wrong :p !

As evidence .. 3d chipset specifications

You'll note that some 9xxx cards are 8.1, & if you read carefully you'll find that all nvidia 5xxx cards only have "Pixel shader version (best) 2.0a " which various folks will tell you needs to read 'b' where it says 'a' to be 'really' dx9 compliant (the folks at ATI & various game manufacturers & MS's original dx9 specs), but nvidia will tell you that by the time you get to direct 9.0c it is compliant anyway (but only 'cos they lobied to get the specs changed!) ..

& so as I said before, to be really sure of getting full direct x 9 compliance get an 9600 or above card (9550 is ok too) or an nvidia 6xxx.

you don`t have to spend a lot of money really i have an nvidia fx6600 with 256 megs on a amd 64 3500 with 1 gig of mem and it plays any of the newer games full up and it only cost about $110.00 canadian it should last me for a year before i change it