Robert-The-Rambler
01-23-2006, 07:07 PM
Well, as promised I have some stuff to report about my ATI X1600 Crossfire PC.
Asus A8R MVP ATI Radeon Xpress 200 Crossfire motherboard
Athlon64 3200+ Venice Core with 512kb of level 2 cache
2 Radeon X1600 XT video cards
Soundblaster Audigy2 sound card
2 gigs of dual channel PC 3200 RAM from Kingston
250 gig ATA133 7200 RPM hard drive with 16 meg buffer
Operating System is Windows XP SP2
Well in the only synthetic benchmark I've been able to run I pushed a 7500 in 3DMark 2005. It is a significant number to me because it shows only what can be done with two XT1600 cards without quality settings enabled. I did not buy this setup for that at all but it shows about a 50% increase in framerate . So in pure speed mode in 3DMark 2005 the cards score about as high as a single Radeon X1800 XL which costs about the same. The beauty is that it does that all the while having the features of Crossfire including 14X Super AA.(Ultra HIGH Image quality to say the least) I have not been able to test Super AA at 14X too much but trust me when I say this. It is and will be playable in many games at 1024 * 768. That is what I truly built this rig for. 14x Super AA on my 6' * 8' projector in either 800 * 600 or 1024 * 768.
My current observations are as follows. XT1600s, even in crossfire are not ideal for OpenGL apps like Doom3 and Quake4. It has to be a result of the limit of 4 texture mapping units per card.(I don't think it is because of the 128 bit memory buses because other high detail games are fine) I'll be honest here. I am an image quality whore and I refuse to play games without full 16x anisotropic filtering, full mipmap detail, and vertical sync. I want FSAA, too but only if it does not reduce frame rate to a crawl. So the results for Quake4 in particular are somewhat disappointing. On a positive note, two XT1600s can and will play Quake4 smoothly in Ultra Quality mode depending on your other settings so while performance certainly is not optimal you can certainly enjoy the game at 1280 * 1024 with all settings maxed other than FSAA which you should leave off for Quake 4. I would benchmark the game but I don't know how to so any advice is much appreciated. I want to help give everybody a clear idea of what I'm dealing with.
Half Life 2 performance is amazing!! I can push every single quality detail to the max and still run well over 30 frames I suppose at 1600 * 1200 with full FSAA in temporal and adaptive modes at 4x. It is awesome!!! I never thought watching the bad guys fall down stairs after I shoot them would ever look so realistic not to mention the purdy water, too. I need to go fire up Half Life 2 before it gets to late. Somebody help me benchmark this stuff. I want to show both the limitations and amazing capabilities of Crossfire XT1600s. Please help me so I can help you.
Asus A8R MVP ATI Radeon Xpress 200 Crossfire motherboard
Athlon64 3200+ Venice Core with 512kb of level 2 cache
2 Radeon X1600 XT video cards
Soundblaster Audigy2 sound card
2 gigs of dual channel PC 3200 RAM from Kingston
250 gig ATA133 7200 RPM hard drive with 16 meg buffer
Operating System is Windows XP SP2
Well in the only synthetic benchmark I've been able to run I pushed a 7500 in 3DMark 2005. It is a significant number to me because it shows only what can be done with two XT1600 cards without quality settings enabled. I did not buy this setup for that at all but it shows about a 50% increase in framerate . So in pure speed mode in 3DMark 2005 the cards score about as high as a single Radeon X1800 XL which costs about the same. The beauty is that it does that all the while having the features of Crossfire including 14X Super AA.(Ultra HIGH Image quality to say the least) I have not been able to test Super AA at 14X too much but trust me when I say this. It is and will be playable in many games at 1024 * 768. That is what I truly built this rig for. 14x Super AA on my 6' * 8' projector in either 800 * 600 or 1024 * 768.
My current observations are as follows. XT1600s, even in crossfire are not ideal for OpenGL apps like Doom3 and Quake4. It has to be a result of the limit of 4 texture mapping units per card.(I don't think it is because of the 128 bit memory buses because other high detail games are fine) I'll be honest here. I am an image quality whore and I refuse to play games without full 16x anisotropic filtering, full mipmap detail, and vertical sync. I want FSAA, too but only if it does not reduce frame rate to a crawl. So the results for Quake4 in particular are somewhat disappointing. On a positive note, two XT1600s can and will play Quake4 smoothly in Ultra Quality mode depending on your other settings so while performance certainly is not optimal you can certainly enjoy the game at 1280 * 1024 with all settings maxed other than FSAA which you should leave off for Quake 4. I would benchmark the game but I don't know how to so any advice is much appreciated. I want to help give everybody a clear idea of what I'm dealing with.
Half Life 2 performance is amazing!! I can push every single quality detail to the max and still run well over 30 frames I suppose at 1600 * 1200 with full FSAA in temporal and adaptive modes at 4x. It is awesome!!! I never thought watching the bad guys fall down stairs after I shoot them would ever look so realistic not to mention the purdy water, too. I need to go fire up Half Life 2 before it gets to late. Somebody help me benchmark this stuff. I want to show both the limitations and amazing capabilities of Crossfire XT1600s. Please help me so I can help you.