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3D Performance with Counter-Strike: Source Part 2 Mainstream Cards October 26, 2004 |
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Summary: Wondering if Counter-Strike: Source will take advantage of the extra memory found in a 256MB graphics card? Perhaps you want to see which mainstream card comes out on top in CS: Source? If you answered "yes" to either question, this article is for you. We've rounded up ATI's RADEON X700 PRO and XT and compared them against the GeForce 6600 GT, RADEON 9800 PRO, and RADEON 9800 XT. See how everything settles in today's article!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 19 ) |
As its name suggests, CS: Source takes the components found in the original Counter-Strike, including many of the game’s favorite maps, all the weapons and equipment, and ports it over to Valve’s Source engine, which is also used for Half-Life 2. Besides the graphics, the physics in CS: Source have been cranked up as well. Props (including the weapons of dead players) will go flying every time a frag grenade goes off, while players can be seen tossing their weapons to themselves. Valve has also updated the flashbang, which now deafens your hearing as well as blinding your vision. The overall reception to CS: Source has been very positive. If you liked the original, chances are you’ll like CS: Source, while if you didn’t care for Counter-Strike, the additions found in CS: Source probably won’t change your opinion either.
In part 1 of our 3D Performance with Counter-Strike: Source series, we evaluated the performance of the high-end cards from ATI and NVIDIA. Today we’re here to take a look at the latest mainstream offerings, ATI’s RADEON X700 XT/PRO and the NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT, and see how they compare to last year’s high-end champ, RADEON 9800 XT, as well as the RADEON 9800 PRO 128MB. With street prices for these boards hovering around $200, these cards have become popular mainstream solutions. By rounding up these five cards, we can see how the next generation of mainstream parts compare to one another, as well as popular DX9 options from the past.
Before we get started, one important point we should mention is the configuration of the RADEON X700 and GeForce 6600 boards. For this article we’re using Sapphire’s 256MB Hybrid RADEON X700 PRO, while the RADEON X700 XT and GeForce 6600 GT reference cards both feature 128MB of memory. In earlier articles from August we discovered in both the video stress test and Counter-Strike: Source beta that the larger frame buffer memory found in 256MB cards gives them a performance advantage at high resolutions with high levels of AA and/or AF turned on. We were curious to see if the 256MB of memory found in the Sapphire card allowed it to pull ahead of the theoretically faster X700 XT, even though its X700 PRO core and memory run at lower clock speeds.
| Test systems | Page:: ( 2 / 19 ) |
System Setup
Intel Pentium 4 “Prescott” 3.4GHz
ABIT IC7-G MAX II Advance
ABIT AA8 DuraMax
1GB OCZ EL DDR400 Platinum Edition Rev 2
1GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 Memory
ATI RADEON X700 XT
Sapphire Hybrid RADEON X700 PRO 256MB
ATI RADEON 9800 XT 256MB
ATI RADEON 9800 PRO 128MB
Driver version 8.07 beta hotfix
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT reference card
Driver version 66.81
250GB Maxtor Hard Drive Maxline III SATA Hard Drive w/16MB Cache
Windows XP Professional SP1
DirectX 9.0c
Benchmarks
Counter-Strike: Source
Model, Texture, Shader, Shadow, and Water Detail all set to High
Water Detail: World
| Cobble | Page:: ( 3 / 19 ) |
Counter-Strike: Source – Direct3D
| Cobble | Page:: ( 4 / 19 ) |
Counter-Strike: Source – Direct3D
| Cobble 2xAA/16xAF | Page:: ( 5 / 19 ) |
Counter-Strike: Source – Direct3D
| Cobble 4xAA | Page:: ( 6 / 19 ) |
Counter-Strike: Source – Direct3D
| Aztec | Page:: ( 7 / 19 ) |
Counter-Strike: Source – Direct3D
| Aztec 2xAA | Page:: ( 8 / 19 ) |
Counter-Strike: Source – Direct3D
| Aztec 2xAA/16xAF | Page:: ( 9 / 19 ) |
Counter-Strike: Source – Direct3D
| Aztec 4xAA | Page:: ( 10 / 19 ) |
Counter-Strike: Source – Direct3D
| Dust | Page:: ( 11 / 19 ) |
Counter-Strike: Source – Direct3D
| Dust 2xAA | Page:: ( 12 / 19 ) |
Counter-Strike: Source – Direct3D
| Dust 4xAA/16xAF | Page:: ( 13 / 19 ) |
Counter-Strike: Source – Direct3D
| Dust 4xAA | Page:: ( 14 / 19 ) |
Counter-Strike: Source – Direct3D
| Italy | Page:: ( 15 / 19 ) |
Counter-Strike: Source – Direct3D
| Italy 2xAA | Page:: ( 16 / 19 ) |
Counter-Strike: Source – Direct3D
| Italy 2xAA/16xAF | Page:: ( 17 / 19 ) |
Counter-Strike: Source – Direct3D
| Italy 4xAA | Page:: ( 18 / 19 ) |
Counter-Strike: Source – Direct3D
| Conclusion | Page:: ( 19 / 19 ) |
First, Counter-Strike: Source will take advantage of the extra memory found in 256MB graphics cards. The 256MB X700 PRO swept all the 1600x1200 tests against the 128MB X700 XT with 4xAA enabled, and pulled ahead with 2xAA/16xAF turned on as well. Whether or not the game is playable at 1600x1200 with 4xAA and an X700 PRO 256MB is up to your personal taste, but certainly an argument can be made for cobble, where the X700 PRO delivered 56.8 frames per second. Some gamers will want to shoot for 60 frames per second or more in CS: Source, while others will be happy at just 30-40 fps. We’ve found that practically everyone has a different opinion on what a playable frame rate is. But if you can spare the extra cash on a 256MB card, definitely do it.
The second conclusion that can be drawn from the data presented today is that the GeForce 6600 GT is generally faster than the RADEON X700 XT. There are a few cases where the opposite is true, and the two cards finish closely to one another in multiple cases, but we’d have to give the CS: Source crown to GeForce 6600 GT for now. Despite being equipped with only 128MB of memory, it managed to pull even with the 256MB RADEON X700 PRO card in Aztec with 4xAA at 1600x1200, we wouldn’t be surprised to see a 256MB 6600 GT outpace the RADEON 9800 XT in that situation.
That’s probably the best aspect of today’s mainstream cards. For about $200, you can get a card that’s capable of giving last year’s $500 graphics cards a run for their money. The mainstream segment really didn’t get this kind of performance out of the last wave of cards, including the RADEON 9600 XT and GeForce FX 5700 Ultra. We truly haven’t been this excited about a mainstream card since the RADEON 9500 PRO/GeForce4 Ti 4200.
Now if ATI and NVIDIA can get AGP versions of these boards out on the market. It’s nearly November and AGP cards still haven’t shipped. We have a feeling that the first one to bring AGP cards to retail will rake home the sales this holiday season, we just wish we knew who that was and when it’s going to happen. For now, AGP users with an eye on these cards should consider this article a preview of things to come, as we’ve seen that the PCI-E platform performs largely the same as AGP.