A Detailed Analysis of the
ATI RADEON HD 2400XT/2600PRO/2600XT
(RV610/630)

Contents

1. Theory and architecture
2. Graphics cards' features, synthetic tests
3. Results of game tests (performance) and conclusions

[1] [2] [3] [1P] Next: Part 2 >>

Part 3. Performance in Games

Test results: performance comparison

You can look at our testbed configuration here.

We used the following test applications:

• Splinter Cell Chaos Theory v.1.04 (Ubisoft) - DirectX 9.0, shaders 3.0 (with/without HDR), maximum settings.
• Call Of Juarez (Techland/Ubisoft) - DirectX 9.0, shaders 3.0 (HDR), demo (demo Tests were run with maximum quality settings. The batch file is included.
• Call Of Juarez DX10 Benchmark (Techland) - DirectX 10.0, shaders 4.0,
• FarCry 1.4 (beta) (Crytek/UbiSoft), DirectX 9.0, shaders 2.0b/3.0 (with/without HDR), 3 demos from the Research level (-DEVMODE startup option), Very High test settings. We used HDRRendering=1 for HDR tests.
• PREY 1.01 (3D Realms Entertainment / Human Head Studios / 2K Games) - OpenGL, shaders 2.x, demo003 (40MB!). Tests were run with maximum quality. The batch file is included.
• 3DMark05 1.20 (FutureMark) - DirectX 9.0, multitexturing, trilinear filtering.
• Serious Sam II 1.068 (Croteam/2K Games) - DirectX 9.0, shaders 3.0 (with/without HDR), batch file to start the test. It's the standard demo0002 that comes with the game. Tests settings - maximum.
  We express our thanks to our reader, Vozniuk Valery AKA Px, for his batch file to run this game.
• F.E.A.R. v.1.08 (Multiplayer) (Monolith/Sierra) - DirectX 9.0, shaders 2.0, maximum test settings, Soft shadows disabled.
• Company Of Heroes (Relic Entertainment/THQ) - DirectX 9.0, shaders 2.0, startup batch file. When you start the game, you should go to options, choose the graphics section, and press the test button. Tests were run with maximum quality.
• 3DMark06 1.02 (FutureMark) - DirectX 9.0c, multitexturing, trilinear test settings.
• RightMark3D (iXBT.com) - DirectX, synthetic benchmark, Shader 2.0/2.0b/3.0, you can download it here.
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 1.003 (GSC Game World/THQ) - DirectX 9.0, demo. You should unpack the files into the game folder with savegames (Documents and settings). When the game starts up, load ixbt3, open the console and start the demo: demo_play ixbt3. Test settings - maximum (BUT DYNAMIC LIGHTING IS DISABLED, because it heavily loads a CPU instead of a GPU).

If you have a decent understanding of 3D graphics, you may draw your own conclusions for the diagrams below. However, if you are interested in our comments on test results, you may read them after each test. Anything that is important to beginners and those who are new to the world of video cards will be explained in detail in the comments.

First of all, you should look through our reference materials on modern graphics cards and their GPUs. Be sure to note the operating frequencies, support for modern technologies (shaders), as well as the pipeline architecture. You should understand that the 8800 family of accelerators completely did away with the notion of a pipeline. These cards instead have streaming processors, which process shaders in a game. Texture units process pixels (applying textures, filtering) by themselves. In other words, the processes are fully divided. Data is written into a memory buffer, as always, only after texture operations are completed. The old procedure used in older video cards was to take a triangle, calculate it with shader commands, apply texture(s), filter it, and send it along; this procedure is not used anymore. It's up to a driver and a thread processor to distribute tasks between the stream processors. The same goes for texture units. The situation is similar with with the R600 and RV6xx families.

ATI RADEON X1300-1600-1800-1900, HD 2900 Reference

NVIDIA GeForce 7300-7600-7800-7900-8800 Reference

If you have just begun realizing how large the selection to choose a video card is, don't worry, our 3D Graphics section offers articles about 3D basics (you will still have to understand them - when you run a game and open its options, you'll see such notions as textures, lighting, etc) as well as reviews of new products. There are just two companies that manufacture graphics processors: ATI (the graphics department of AMD) and NVIDIA. So most of the information is divided into these two sections. We also publish monthly 3Digests that sum up all comparisons of graphics cards for various price segments.

All of our tests are currently run on Windows XP. This is because it is currently the main OS for PC gaming. Later on we'll examine RightMark DX10 on Windows Vista. To be frank, the problem with Vista right now is that it is still buggy. But since it is the only operating system to support DirectX 10, sooner or later we will have to turn to it. These results, however, will be published in a different article. We will start using DX10 benchmarks hopefully sometime in August. Right now, though, we are still waiting for more stable drivers, anything less would skew performance results.

Contents

1. Theory and architecture
2. Graphics cards' features, synthetic tests
3. Results of game tests (performance) and conclusions