ASUS Radeon 9600XT
Benchmarking Results: Real gaming applications
From synthetic applications, we are now moving on to analyzing the performance of the graphic boards in real gaming applications.
Unreal Tournament 2003
The game Unreal Tournament 2003 has traditionally been more loyal to video cards based on NVIDIA chips. So, what do we see now? We see that the NVIDIA card based on a past-generation Middle-end chip takes a lead (albeit at a small margin) over today's ATI's Middle-end representative, ASUS Radeon 9600XT. And ATI cards without any surprises ranked in ascending order of clock speeds of graphic chips and memory.
In the 1024x768 resolution with 4x antialiasing enabled, the alignment of forces is not changing, but as the resolution goes up Radeon 9600XT is coming up as a leader.
With 8x anisotropic filtering enabled, ASUS Radeon 9600XT finally overtakes at both resolutions. However, the direct competitor of ASUS V9560/TVD - Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro - still lags well behind its rival, so we can't claim there is an on-par struggle of ATI and NVIDIA among the cards of the same class in this gaming benchmark.
Finally, the most demanding mode combining antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. We see a sure leadership of NVIDIA card over a the ATI board of the same class, and a substantial gap from ASUS Radeon 9600XT in high resolution. The greater operating frequencies of the latter make themselves felt.
Unreal II: The Awakening
Situation in Unreal 2 is traditionally reverse to what we observed in Unreal Tournament 2003. A complete fiasco of the NVIDIA board. At the absolute fps reading, ATI Radeon 9600XT shows quite good frame-rate - it seems to be a good match for those into "shooting at good fps rate" at a reasonable "price/performance" ratio =).
Call Of Duty
In our test run with "the replacement to Return to Castle Wolfenstein", the ASUS V9560 Ultra/TVD takes the last place even failing to catch up with GeXcube Radeon 9600 Pro with reduced memory clocking. Isn't that a strange result in view of the ever high results for NVIDIA boards in OpenGL tests?
The general picture with 4x antialiasing enabled does not change except that NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra does succeed in bypassing GeXcube Radeon 9600 Pro in both resolutions.
But to overcome anisotropic filtering was too high a price ASUS V9560/TVD had to pay...
The most demanding modes combining anisotropy and antialiasing make ASUS V9560/TVD a leader in low resolutions versus its direct competitor - Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro. But at 1280x1024 we already see a complete parity. In all the modes, ASUS Radeon 9600XT is an undisputable leader.
Basing on the results produced with Call of Duty, it's highly difficult to make any distinct conclusions regarding the choice of a one-one winner. Anyway, the results in various operation modes strongly differ, which does not allow us making any one-one conclusions.
X2: The Threat Demo
The "Ultra Shadows" technology implemented in the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra chip allows the ASUS V9560/TVD board competing with ASUS Radeon 9600XT (!) on par due to that stencil shades in NVIDIA chips are handled faster with this technology than in ATI chips.
Final Fantasy XI Official Benchmark 2
Basing on our experience of this benchmark, we say that all is restricted by the raw fill-rate speed. At that, ASUS Radeon 9600XT leads with pretty good results. On the other hand, NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra shows inexcusably low result as compared to Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro.
AquaMark 3
On the whole, the situation in AquaMark 3 repeats the alignment of forces in 3DMark 2003, except that in 3DMark 2003 the ASUS V9560/TVD was able to win due to essential optimizations in the much lightened GeXcube Radeon 9600 Pro. But neither can we observe it here.
Gun Metal Benchmark 2
Version 2.0 shader programs have always been a challenge for NVIDIA chips. The benchmark based on the Gun Metal gaming engine is in support of that. Although it doesn't use version 2.0 pixel shaders, but only 1.1, the load applied to the accelerators because of the engine specifics is tremendous (in support of which the absolute fps values tell). As we see, ASUS Radeon 9600XT leaves its competitors well behind, and the NVIDIA board lags behind the leader substantially.
HALO: Combat Evolved
The results here are similar to those in the previous test.
Half-life 2 Leaked Beta
In shader applications, NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra (like all the boards of the FX family) loses significantly. And the pure HLSV in the form of Half-Life 2 is a vivid confirmation of that.
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