R600vsG80 Benchmark Comparisons From Any Game Welcome!

[Blacklash]

Stable @ 702 | 2300:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=28213&stc=1&d=1191458490

Go Xion, Go Xion :p

:nana:

[Xion X2]

:D

I could probably go even higher; there's a big air pocket right before my graphics card that I'm having trouble bleeding out that is affecting temps in a bad way. I may have to unhook everything and bleed it out manually tonight.

Last night she was stable at 720 for a few minutes before temps rose a little. If I can keep them down I could probably squeeze a little more out of her.

[slaWter]

Fancy looking block! And great clock so far. Congrats!

But what happened to the Xeon Quad?

[qube]

:D

I could probably go even higher; there's a big air pocket right before my graphics card that I'm having trouble bleeding out that is affecting temps in a bad way. I may have to unhook everything and bleed it out manually tonight.

Last night she was stable at 720 for a few minutes before temps rose a little. If I can keep them down I could probably squeeze a little more out of her.
741 MHz = 729 MHz
742 MHz = 756 MHz
cant get it stable at 756 any more most reroute my floe and take a way NB block

[Xion X2]

But what happened to the Xeon Quad?

They shipped me the wrong stepping, and now they're telling me they don't have the G0 in stock.

:firedevil

This is a rare chip, it seems. Looking around for another one in the meantime.

[Xion X2]

qube--that's one hell of an overclock. I need to get my loop worked out so I can push her harder. NB block is also killing my flow.. I've thought of taking it out. It's really slowing down flowrate.

[XMAN52373]

qube--that's one hell of an overclock. I need to get my loop worked out so I can push her harder. NB block is also killing my flow.. I've thought of taking it out. It's really slowing down flowrate.

Why not add a pair of Ys to you setup? Right after the pump and and again before the rad. This way you get full flow and you can run the CPU and NB cooler off one line and your new card(s) off the other.

[Xion X2]

8800 Ultra vs. 2900XT
THE BATTLE OF THE SHADER BEASTS :firedevil
http://img353.imageshack.us/img353/995/vsbm9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Core System:
E6600 @ 3.6GHz
Gigabyte P35 DSR3
Crucial Ballistix DDR2-800 @ 900MHz
Silverstone 850W Zeus

8800 Ultra (660|2300), ForceWare 163.69
2900XT 512MB (875|1950), Catalyst 7.9


Rarely does one come across such a golden opportunity to bench two of the strongest cards on the market back-to-back unless he works for a hardware review site. Well, seeing as I'm a recent 2900 owner who has switched back to the Nvidia camp, I found myself in a unique position. So this past weekend I did some extensive benching between my Ultra and 2900XT. I wanted to test a few of the latest and greatest, most demanding games on the market with two of the best cards. We hear so much of "You can't trust this/that review.." so here was a unique opportunity to lay all the doubts to rest.

The games I tested were Bioshock, Oblivion, Medal of Honor Airborne, Lord of the Rings: Online and Call of Juarez--arguably the five best looking games out at the moment. Each bench was conducted with utmost attention paid to locale (i.e. - all benches were ran in the same section of the game with identical surroundings.) Bioshock and Call of Juarez were benched in DirectX10 mode, and all titles were benched on Vista 32 @ 1680x1050 resolution. The Ultra was at stock clocks (660|2300) and the XT was overclocked (875|1950). I have had the XT all the way to 900MHz on the core in XP, but for some reason I cannot get it stable at that same speed in Vista. A real bummer considering that was one of the key elements that drew me toward it in the first place. Wizzard's ATI Tool is one of the best tweaking gadgets there is with its built in voltage adjustor.

All that aside, I settled for 875MHz on the XT core to do my benching with. At the core of the system is a Conroe E6600 @ 3.6GHz running on the P35 platform, equipped with 2GB of Crucial Ballistix DDR2-800. When swapping cards, the utmost care was taken with cleaning out old driver files before installing the new driver by booting into safe mode to remove old files.

So let's cut to the chase. The first on my list was Bioshock, so let's see how she did on the two cards.

Bioshock - "Plasmids Changed Everythin'"
(Stretch-run = From bathysphere to woman at baby carriage)

http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/1350/bioshockky5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

As the graphs show, it was just no contest. The Ultra handled it quite well, and the XT struggled in some places.. even with a considerable overclock. Considering Bioshock is a FPS, it makes play difficult when you get frames dropping as low as 24fps. Even with vsync off you get noticeable mouse lag.


Alright, next up was Oblivion. I conducted two test-runs: one without alpha AA and one with alpha AA. Global settings were as follows--

Oblivion - Vista 32
In-game: Ultra-high, all sliders maxed except self-shadows.
Driver: 4xAA
Ini: Grass density set to 110


And away we go...

The location benched was at Fort Camala in the forests just outside of Chorrol. I've found this to be one of the most demanding places on the game with all of the grass, trees, and shadows all over.

The stretch-run was from the fort through the forest and to the top of the hill. I captured some shots showing the start and end of the bench:

http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/3388/oblivionod3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)


Both cards run this game well, and from the benches you can see that the XT hangs with the Ultra pretty well although it's still behind. The bar graph is displaying the tests without alpha AA. The top frapslog is for the Ultra; the bottom frapslog window is for the XT. The 2nd score in the top window is the Ultra with alpha AA enabled (Multisampling Transparency). Amazingly, the Ultra takes only a .8fps hit with it enabled! I accidentally saved over the frapslog run for the XT that had the alpha AA run, but it wasn't too shabby either. It scored 41fps in the bench with alpha AA enabled (Adaptive Multisampling) and took ~3fps hit. Not bad at all, but still behind the Ultra--again.


Next up...



Lord of the Rings: Online

http://img111.imageshack.us/img111/336/lotroclient200709282348tm3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)


You don't hear a lot of talk about this game in the benchmarking world, but in my opinion it has to be one of the best looking games out there. Not only does it have the most amazing sky I've ever seen, but it has some impressive lighting effects (post-processing and all that junk), and the draw distance is almost unparalleled. Basically, you can see as far as you ever wanted to. Those trees drawn out far away in the above shot are drawn in full detail at that distance.

Settings:
1680x1050
In-game: Everything maxed, 16x Anisotropic
Driver: 4xAA

~Rivendale~
Silver Deep Mine to Frerin's Court

http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/6340/lotrogc2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

If you're wondering if that's a joke, it's not. I gave the XT a big fat 0 because it wouldn't even run the game at my native res. Every time I tried to enable 1680x1050 I would get an "Out of Range" message and my screen would go black. :rolleyes:

Needless to say, the Ultra wins this one hands down.

Next up:



Medal of Honor Airborne

Operation: Husky (entire campaign)

Settings:
1680x1050
In-game: Maximum settings
Driver: 8x Anisotropic

http://img380.imageshack.us/img380/2170/mohem6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

This was the closest of the benchmarks. The Ultra eeked out a 1fps win over the XT. The XT seems to do fairly well in Unreal engine games as long as you don't run AA. Luckily, Airborne doesn't need much AA at all, if any. It's pretty clean as-is, although a little AA is always nice. I didn't try to force it on as the XT has had trouble enabling AA on these types of games.


Next up:


Call of Juarez - DX10

[KasuCode]

Nice keep em coming. You know what game im waiting for :D

[Blacklash]

Pump that Ultra back up to 700 and compare them :D

[Xion X2]

Pump that Ultra back up to 700 and compare them :D

:D

I'm going to keep updating that same post with the additional benches instead of creating additional posts for them. So keep linking back to #1333 if you're interested.

[acroig]

Rarely does one come across such a golden opportunity to bench two of the strongest cards on the market back-to-back unless he works for a hardware review site. Well, seeing as I'm a recent 2900 owner who has switched back to the Nvidia camp, I found myself in a unique position. So this past weekend I did some extensive benching between my Ultra and 2900XT. I wanted to test a few of the latest and greatest, most demanding games on the market with two of the best cards. We hear so much of "You can't trust this/that review.." so here was a unique opportunity to lay all the doubts to rest.

Just awesome, man! Great reading, thanks! See ya back at Rage. ;)

[fivefeet8]

Nice benches Xion. On both cards. You mind running some tests with AA enabled for both Bioshock and MOHA on the 8800 ultra? You'll need to set the R6:Vegas AA compatibility bit for both games.

[qube]

i eill change my rad to a bigger one
this one http://www.coolerkit.dk/graphics/groups/75_m.jpg

[qube]

and a bigger res http://www.coolerkit.dk/Graphics/Products/335b_m.jpg
http://www.coolerkit.dk/Graphics/Products/335c_m.jpg
or this one
http://www.coolerkit.dk/Graphics/Products/800d.jpg

[slaWter]

Very nice benchmarks Xion, thanks!

And good luck with the G0 Xeon ;)

[Blacklash]

:D

I'm going to keep updating that same post with the additional benches instead of creating additional posts for them. So keep linking back to #1333 if you're interested.

Will do. Those "Oblivion" benches make the HD 2900Pro look like a good card for what it costs. I doubt most folks will see 875 like your XT, and I've seen quite a few doing 840-860 on air with the Pro.

I'd still lean toward nVidia if I could only own a single card. The HD2900 cards vary wildly from title to title in performance and then sometimes you run into issues like you did with "Lord of the Rings". That would eventually annoy me to the point of replacing it.

[fivefeet8]

I'd still lean toward nVidia if I could only own a single card. The HD2900 cards vary wildly from title to title in performance and then sometimes you run into issues like you did with "Lord of the Rings". That would eventually annoy me to the point of replacing it.

Less popular games with lower driver/compiler optimization development stemming from the VLIW and Superscalar shader architecture is likely the issues. The driver teams from AMDTI are probably working as best they can with what they were given.

The AA issues the 2900 cards have with the newer UT3 engine games also would erk me a bit. They wouldn't as much if Nvidia couldn't enable AA with them as well, but....

[KasuCode]

Will do. Those "Oblivion" benches make the HD 2900Pro look like a good card for what it costs. I doubt most folks will see 875 like your XT, and I've seen quite a few doing 840-860 on air with the Pro.

I'd still lean toward nVidia if I could only own a single card. The HD2900 cards vary wildly from title to title in performance and then sometimes you run into issues like you did with "Lord of the Rings". That would eventually annoy me to the point of replacing it.


I can hit 875 on air. The 2900xt cooler is really nice. Its actually pretty quiet for normal use but if you crank it up for overclocking you can get really high clocks. but running the fan at 100% is pretty loud. The fan on normal overclocking only runs no more then 60% for me.

[Barrok]

I am confused about one thing Xion, you keep saying the Ultra "won" a particular benchmark. Looking over your review, the Ultra might have received the "highest" fps, but the 2900xt is roughly 200-300 dollars cheaper than the ultra. It seems like, according to your benchmarks, the price/performance goes to the 2900xt. You also say that the default clocks on your ultra core are 660? Does that mean you have the MSI, cause that is the only Ultra I have seen with 660 on the core.

Personally, it looks like the 390 dollar 2900xt overclocked seems to hold up very well compared to the $600+ dollar Ultra. Also, the Ultra default clocks (according to Nvidia specs are 612mhz on the core). My guess is, if you used the default clocks rather than your overclocked card (as far as I know there are no pre-overclocked 2900xt's on the market) against the overclocked 2900xt, it might be even closer!

Not trying to take away from your hard work. I appreciate it. But if you were going into it trying to show that the 2900xt could beat the Ultra, everyone knows that wouldn't have happened.

Its like having a pro basketball team take on a college team. Of course you know the pro team will win, but the college team might give it a solid try :)

[Xion X2]

First off, I wasn't trying to "show" anything. I knew that the Ultra would come out on top in the majority of the benchmarks. As I said in my original post, I did this because I found myself in the unique position of owning both cards, so hey, why not benchmark them to see if they mimicked what we all see in reviews? I also did it for my own personal reasons; I wanted to see up close and personal how well the XT competed. If it had stayed closer in more tests, then I was going to hold onto it and ship the Ultra back because, as you said, it's a much cheaper card. Another reason that I benched them was so I could also offer a lot more detailed testing by posting frapslog runs which you never see these review sites do. They never give you the total # of frames that were rendered or length of the benchmark or anything. They just slap a # on a bar graph.

Secondly, there are many games that the 2900XT either won't even run or gets its butt handed to it. DirectX10 performance is horrible. Even the GTS beats the XT in Bioshock and Lost Planet in DirectX10--and judging by what I saw would probably do the same in Call of Juarez. That's unacceptable to me for a 400$ videocard that has been hyped for its DirectX10 capabilities. Sure, there are games like MOH: Airborne and Oblivion that it competes well in. But the problem with the card is inconsistency. When you invest 400$ in a product, you want consistency. You don't want it playing one game well and the next one like crap (or not at all.. such as the case in LOTRO).

And the Ultra is at factory clocks. I have the MSI which comes at 660/2300 stock. I now have mine at 702/2300 and stable. So if I allowed the Ultra its maximum overclock like I did the XT, then the margin in the tests would've been even worse than it was. I don't see why you think it would've been more fair to scale the clock back on the Ultra--that makes no sense. If I was going to do that, then to make it fair I would've scaled the clock back on the XT as well. The XT was actually favored in this case; it was overclocked to its max, and the Ultra wasn't.

[KasuCode]

I think your doing a great job. Its fun to see. Hows the benching comming btw. I check this thread a few times a day to see if you update your post.

[Xion X2]

I think your doing a great job. Its fun to see. Hows the benching comming btw. I check this thread a few times a day to see if you update your post.
Thanks. I went out of town this weekend and just got back. I downloaded the Crysis beta, but it runs pretty bad on high settings in Vista, and it looks horrible, IMO. I get anywhere from 15-50fps, but it hangs around 15-25 a lot of the time. That is one horribly optimized pile of code right now.

I'll try my best to put those CoJ benches up and run a bench with Crysis in the next few days.

[KasuCode]

Thanks. I went out of town this weekend and just got back. I downloaded the Crysis beta, but it runs pretty bad on high settings in Vista, and it looks horrible, IMO. I get anywhere from 15-50fps, but it hangs around 15-25 a lot of the time. That is one horribly optimized pile of code right now.

I'll try my best to put those CoJ benches up and run a bench with Crysis in the next few days.


Cool cant wait. And yea might want to run at 1440x900 on crysis. If you can some with and without AA test would be nice :) Most of us understand that things could be very diffrent for crysis when the demo hits. I never even bothered with Beta 3. Just played Beta 1 and 2

[XMAN52373]

Thanks. I went out of town this weekend and just got back. I downloaded the Crysis beta, but it runs pretty bad on high settings in Vista, and it looks horrible, IMO. I get anywhere from 15-50fps, but it hangs around 15-25 a lot of the time. That is one horribly optimized pile of code right now.

I'll try my best to put those CoJ benches up and run a bench with Crysis in the next few days.

Sent you a PM over the weekend.