[rwolf]

Which game benchmarks would you be most interested in seeing for comparing the performance and IQ features of the X1800XT and 7800GTX and why?

I think I am interested to see how well the X1800XT runs doom3 considering it is radically different from the R4XX architecture.

I also think it is time for reviewers to move beyond 1600x1200.

[Karma Police]

Warcraft II. 'nuff said.












that, or FEAR. whichever. & HL2, for all the chainlink fences.

[BRiT]

Agreed. Would love to see 1920x1200 benchmark results.

[rwolf]

Originally Posted by BRiT

Agreed. Would love to see 1920x1200 benchmark results.

I have dual 20.1 inch 2005FPW monitors at work and I have been eyeing the 24-inch 2405FPW for home. I've notice that a bunch of people already have them. With a 12ms response time they should be great for gaming on the X1800XT and 7800GTX.

[rwolf]

Originally Posted by Karma Police

Warcraft II. 'nuff said.

Actually, on that subject doesn't WOW have a bunch of PS 3.0 features?

[LVSeminole]

I would love to see, HL2, Far Cry, Fear, Doom 3, Some Serious Sam 2 as well. On the resolution front, yes, I think reviewers should go beyond 1600x1200. Even though most people cant go that much farther than that resolution, its still an option with the GPU's ATI and NVidia are producing lately. Well, 7800GTX can do more than 1600x1200, the X1800XT will probably as well.

LVS

[Bruce]

Lost Coast, Quake 4, Call of Duty 2, Battlefield 2 and FEAR in 1280x1024 and 1600x1200.
1280x1024 might be of interest for people with 19" TFTs.
1600x1200 for CRT-users and people with 20" and above TFTs.

[AlphaWolf]

Originally Posted by rwolf

Actually, on that subject doesn't WOW have a bunch of PS 3.0 features?

I don't think it has any, but its been months since I played.

[mmp121]

Anything so long as its done w/1920x1200 since I got a Dell 24 inch WS LCD. My ATI AIW 9700 isn't cutting it on many games at 1600x1200 anymore. I can barely play BF2 at 800x600 w/decent frame rates!

[epicstruggle]

Can we hold off on reviews until Oblivion comes out?




lol, j/k.
epic

[Moloch]

quake 3
Yes.. 3

[Geo]

I suppose it is a vain hope that "Mr. Baumann's 2405FPW provided by the DELL Corporation" will be appearing at the top of the R520 review. . .

[AlStrong]

Sc:ct!

Gotta have another SM3.0 game in there.

[Sxotty]

Quake 4 woo woo! And yeah anything else it s bonus, I always used to want a Q3 benchmark, but the time is past when I played urban terror.

[digitalwanderer]

Quake4 and F.E.A.R., I'm really looking forward to both.

[MasterBaiter]

Q4, FEAR, and CoDII perhaps. Maybe the latest Splinter Cell game as well. Are there and sim games out there that's qualify?

[Pozer]

How about some benchies with a mid-level CPU for a change. (Like say an Athlon64 3000-3500) . Most review sites these days assume everyone has a Athlon 64 FX87 and corsair PC-6000 ram with 0 latency laying around.

I'd be curious which cards require less CPU power to shine. Back in the day it was more common to see gfx reviews with average CPUs. Now its always athlon64 4000 or faster.

rant over.

as for benchies. FEAR, COD2 demo, FEAR MP demo, SS2, and That new vietnam game.

[Sxotty]

Originally Posted by Pozer

How about some benchies with a mid-level CPU for a change. (Like say an Athlon64 3000-3500) . Most review sites these days assume everyone has a Athlon 64 FX87 and corsair PC-6000 ram with 0 latency laying around.

That would be really, really, really good. I would like to know as I anticipate the possibility of upgrading my GPU from it's current woefully inadeqaute state to a new fast one relatively soon, but I do not want to upgrade CPU/MOBO until socket M2 comes out next spring for AMD.

[MasterBaiter]

It might open a can of worms AFA benching goes (mondo time consuming). It would be nice though. Ideally benches would be carried out across three levels of systems (bottom, mid, high). Do you really need this though if you are doing a review of the new whizz-bang Stuka VGA adapter that uses supercooling, with 2 gigs of ram? Probably not (only high-end need apply). If you are benching high-end components, I would be inclined to bench them on a high end system for simplicities sake. Same goes for other tiers of graphics cards (mid-mid, low-low).

[Sxotty]

But that really isn't true I had a x800pe when they came out, and I did not have a high end system. I do not upgrade at once, and would rather know where I stood given a purchase. Such as could I play oblivion on my machine if I had such a card with current CPU.

[MasterBaiter]

Your points are definitely valid Sxotty, but where do you draw the line in benchmarking?

Hmm.. a few more points (maybe relevent, maybe not).
Most benches are done @ different rez levels which shows many times where a graphics card is either limited by the cpu or by the card itself. This kinda reminds me (gah! a car analogy!) of looking @ a torque/hp curve. Typically the cpu takes up the bottom end resolutions, and the graphics cards takes over in the HP section @ the top end. If a high-end cpu is replaced with a mid-line cpu... I would think that the lower resolutions would be affected to a more significant manner than the top. This is terribly simplified, but *meh*
Rule of thumb in my book is to crank up the resolution of a game until the fps start falling by a decent margin (where the two lines would meet is the sweet spot).

The VGA card is what is ultimately being benched though. If I had to choose between a high-end bench and a mid-end bench I would definitley choose high. I would rather find out the limits of the graphics card than what the limits of the rest of the system are. If I wanted to know how much memory, HD performance, or cpu performance affected this card... I'd probably be looking for a review on one of these other items. Just my $.02.

[Pozer]

Excellent points all around.

I wouldn't mind so much but it seems there isn't a single site that includes a mid-level system compared with what seemed like alot more sites were willing to 5-6 years ago. I always chalked it up to review sites being taken more seriously and being sent the latest/greatest hardware with strings attached. I may wrongly be assuming most hardware site hosts would snubb a athlon64 3200 in favor of the latest $900 cpu offering that's sitting in the corner.

The car analogy makes sense, no doubt. But for the 85% of people that own mid-level euquipment it forces us to do a fuzzy mental math when reading the bench that may or may not add up. I wonder if video card makers maybe don't want us to see that a 6800ulta would perform the same as a 7800gtx on a a64-3200. The point is we will never know. It would be nice (for the majority of enthusiasts who upgrades piece at a time), to know if the purchase would help them play the newest game better or not. Isn't that the point of a video card review?

[Sxotty]

I do understand the time constraint they operate under, but if these things ever get out into the market I hope some site will at least do this. I think it was either anand or Toms that did a huge comparison sometime ago, but I am not even asking for anything like that, just a few three at maximum different configs.

Like I said this may just have to wait till after NDA is over, but slapping in an AMD 3200+ CPU would not be hard when they are both socket 939 and all you have to do is pull off a heatsink and turn a lever then reverse and press the power button. Much easier than swapping mobos and reinstalling windows and such...

[Kaotik]

Originally Posted by rwolf

Actually, on that subject doesn't WOW have a bunch of PS 3.0 features?

No it doesn't, afaik there's no even PS 2.0 features.

[Hubert]

I'd like to see Age of Empires III. And I'd love if testers would choose RTS/RPG games too, not only FPS ones. (I know, the framepersecond counts there the most, they do tend to be the most innovative technology wise, still, I am not fond of them.)

Example: how much will the unitcap be in SpellForce 2 ? It must have to do something with rendering capabilities, don't you think ?