Radeon X800XT Platinum Edition Impressions
 

Radeon X800XT Platinum Edition Impressions

Hi ATI fans!

I've completed the following report after having tested the Radeon X800XT PE during the past few days. I plan to continue testing a variety of games over the next couple of weeks and will update this report accordingly. The updates will be listed at the end of this post.

http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo...xt_picture.jpg

I purchased the Radeon X800XT Platinum Edition back in May when CompUSA was offering them for $449.99. The card was used in a couple of our GeForce 6 Series reviews and I was thinking about selling it. I wanted to make sure the card was in working order so I began running a series of benchmarks using the Catalyst 4.9 drivers.

http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo...trol_panel.png

Upon installing the X800XT I immediately noticed that the 2D image quality was quite good. I use a 21-inch Sony E540 monitor and normally run a desktop resolution of 1280x960, but found 1600x1200 to be usable with the X800XT. I have decided to keep the card for now and started testing some of my favorite games :D

3DMark03 Results

http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo...benchmarks.png

Games Benchmarked

Call of Duty
Benchmarks were run using the included Timedemo1 demo from the Dawnville map and a custom multiplayer demo I recorded from the POW Camp map. FRAPS was used to record the minimum frame rate.

Enemy Territory
FRAPS was used to record minimum and average frame rates while playing back a custom demo at normal game speed from a 6 vs. 6 player clan match that takes place on the Railgun map. The results are based on the first three minutes of the demo.

Unreal Tournament 2004
Two custom demos were used to measure performance in UT2004. The less intensive demo is a deathmatch botmatch I recorded on Inferno map. The second demo is from a multi-player Onslaught match on the Dria map and is very processor intensive.

The benchmark command line consists of the following parameters:

.\System\UT2004.exe -benchmark -ini=UT2004.ini -exec=..\benchmark\stuff\demo_inferno.txt -nosound -d3d -1600x1200

FRAPS was used to record the minimum frame rate.

Please see our article on benchmarking UT2004 for additional information - http://www.nvnews.net/articles/bench...04/index.shtml

Morrowind
Gameplay walkthrough is explained in this article - http://www.nvnews.net/articles/gamep...nd/index.shtml

Halo
Standard timedemo using the following command line parameters:

-nosound -nojoystick -use20 -vidmode 1600,1200,75 -timedemo –console

FRAPS was used to record the minimum frame rate.

Dungeon Siege
Gameplay walkthrough is explained in this article - http://www.nvnews.net/articles/gamep...ge/index.shtml

Game Settings
In-game graphics and sound settings were configured as follows:

http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo...k_settings.png

Benchmark Results
Note that I am only testing at 1600x1200 with 4XAA and 8XAF unless otherwise specified.

http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo...rk_results.png

High Quality Screenshots
Links to the full-size PNG images are listed under each of the smaller images and average around 2 MB.

Call of Duty

http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo..._dawnville.jpg

1600x1200 with 4X AA and 8X AF - http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo..._dawnville.png

http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo...af_powcamp.jpg

1600x1200 with 4X AA and 8X AF - http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo...af_powcamp.png

Enemy Territory

http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo...800xt_et_1.jpg

1600x1200 with No AA and 8X AF - http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo..._fuel_dump.png
1600x1200 with 4X AA and 8X AF - http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo..._fuel_dump.png

Unreal Tournament 2004

http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo..._4xaa_8xaf.jpg

1600x1200 with 4X AA and 8X AF - http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo..._4xaa_8xaf.png

http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo..._4xaa_8xaf.jpg

1600x1200 with 4X AA and 8X AF - http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo..._4xaa_8xaf.png

Morrowind

http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo...orrowind_1.jpg

1600x1200 with No AA and 8X AF - http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo...oaa_8xaf_1.png
1600x1200 with 4X AA and 8X AF - http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo...xaa_8xaf_1.png

http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo...orrowind_2.jpg

1600x1200 with 4X AA and 8X AF - http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo...xaa_8xaf_2.png

http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo...orrowind_3.jpg

1600x1200 with 4X AA and 8X AF - http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo...xaa_8xaf_3.png

Dungeon Siege

http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo...t_dsiege_1.jpg

1600x1200 with 4X AA and 8X AF - http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo...xaa_8xaf_1.png

Stay tuned...

Updates

09/24/2004 - Added Halo benchmark results.
09/24/2004 - Added UT2004 benchmark results and screenshots.
09/25/2004 - Added Call of Duty benchmark results and screenshots.

Re: Radeon X800XT PE performance
 

Thanks Mike! Interesting to see more data and further impressions... :thumbsup:

Re: Radeon X800XT PE performance
 

Looking good but your 3dmark03 performance is too low. You system is not totally optimized i guess.

Re: Radeon X800XT PE performance
 

Thanks mike as I always enjoy your reviews!

Re: Radeon X800XT PE performance
 

The drivers were set to application preference and I used trilinear and anisotropic filtering options in the 3DMark03 texture setting instead of the default of optimal.

For example, at 1024x768 with 4XAA and 8XAF the overall score increased from 7170 to 8336 when optimal, as opposed to anisotropic texture filtering, was used.

Re: Radeon X800XT PE performance
 

I wondered because i get a higher score with 0AF and 0 AA with a crappy Athlon XP.
Shows once again that 3dmark03 is not dependant on the CPU by a lot.

Re: Radeon X800XT Platinum Edition Impressions
 

Nice review and wide varity of games, keep it up! :O

Re: Radeon X800XT Platinum Edition Impressions
 

Nice review !
.. yeah the X800XT-PE is pretty impressive at most of todays games .

I softmoded my Sapphire X800Pro Toxic to XT-PE @520/570 & the results are pretty great .

the only strange thing i noticed with it that it plays CoD:UO with less performance than my 6800GT system (see sig) .

& a note for the first score in 3dmark2003's .. i thought it uses 1024x768 ,0xAA ,4xAF by default ??

Re: Radeon X800XT Platinum Edition Impressions
 

Thank you for the comments. I hadn't planned on updating my initial report this soon, but I am feeling a bit under the weather this weekend :( That's to be expected though since my younger son was sick with a cold all last week.

Re: Radeon X800XT Platinum Edition Impressions
 

I played the CoD:UO demo last night, which I though was very cool once I figured out what I was supposed to do :)

The gameplay did feel sluggish on the X800XT during the first scene as you make your way back to the base in the jeep while arming the machine gun.

Since much of the gameplay is scripted, the introduction level can be used as an effective benchmark. With FRAPS, I averaged 63 FPS at 1280x1024 with 4XAA and 8XAF while the minimum was 26. I was surpised that the results were that good since I was expecting the average to be around 40 FPS.

It does. But I'm pretty sure that I changed the setting to 0X AF, which you can do in the professional version, before I ran the benchmark.

Re: Radeon X800XT Platinum Edition Impressions
 

Well you did some pretty good job there . i liked the idea of showing the settings & commands used for each game because it can be usefull for the viewer .

I suggest you keep it at least till 3DMark2005 is out . maybe you'd like to make us a review comparing it with the 6800U by then ! ;)

Re: Radeon X800XT Platinum Edition Impressions
 

Note: The problem I had with the Dawn of War demo was a result of using high quality shadows. The solution was to lower the shadow quality to medium.

I was going through the tutorial in the Dawn of War demo when I noticed the following graphics corruption on the X800XT, which I outlined in yellow. When I changed the viewpoint, the corruption usually disappeared, but would sometimes reappear in a different orientation at the new viewpoint. I used a variety of AA/AF settings and resolutions, but the problem continues to persist.

http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo...0xt_dow_1s.jpg

http://www.nvnews.net/previews/radeo...0xt_dow_2s.jpg

I had a similar problem with the Radeon 9800 Pro and Call of Duty when I was reviewing a mini-barebones system earlier this year.

http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/soltek...m/page_7.shtml

http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/soltek..._radeon_1s.jpg

http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/soltek..._radeon_2s.jpg

But I never figured out what caused the corruption or how to go about fixing it.

Any ideas? I ran the game without FRAPS and also tried rebooting the PC. Maybe a driver bug?