Related Articles

Doom 3

We all know what Doom 3 is. We also know that it is the most advanced OpenGL game and benchmark to date, probably rivaled only by Valve's Source engine and Far Cry's Crytek engine, both of which are Direct3D-based. Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 are the de-facto benchmarks for modern graphics cards today, as the engines that power these two games will continue to power games for the next few years.

The X850 and 6800 GT are a tightly-knit couple in both the non-AA/AF and AA/AF sets of tests. The 3D1 manages to beat both of them at 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 with no AA/AF by about 10 FPS, but later joins them in the AA/AF tests. The 6600 GT, as usual, follows up far behind the rest.

Half-Life 2

As mentioned above, the recently-released Half-Life 2 is a de-facto benchmark for Direct3D performance, as the engine, along with the Doom 3 engine, will be powering games for years to come.

The X850 clearly takes the lead in almost every test of Half-Life. It is little wonder that Half-Life 2 was the game chosen to show off ATI's hardware. Half-Life 2 is generally very CPU bound. It is interesting to see that the 3D1 falls behind both the 6800GT and X850 XT PE for the most part - this looks like the overhead of SLI coming into play. Memory issues also become a factor as there is a sharp drop off at 1600 with AA/AF on the 3D1 that is not as pronounced on the 6800GT or the X850 XT PE.