A recent addition to Beyond3D's test environment has been Dell's new 30" LCD display, which has a native pixel resolution of 2560x1600, which is a fairly large footprint by any standards. With only a digital only boards with dual Lin DVI outputs can drive a panel such as this at its native resolution, however With two integrated Dual DVI TMDS transmitters its possible for ATI's X1000 series to drive two of these panels natively!
Given that most of the gaming performances in this article have been characterised by a CPU limitation throughout many of the scenarios, up to 1600x1200, we can use this 30" panel to render at a few resolutions beyond that and see what resolutions are feasible with the X1900. Using a few of the games we've already looked at, we've picked two resolutions beyond 1600x1200 that the title supports to look at the performance. The previous results from 1024x768 to 1600x1200 will be included again to build up a trend for the fill-rate graphs.
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
Splinter Cell, as we've seen before, is one of the more demanding tests, so we'll drive it to higher resolutions to see how the X1900 performs here.
SC:CT Performance  
| |
786432 |
1310720 |
1920000 |
3145728 |
4096000 |
| X1900 XTX |
85.6 |
108.7 |
121.9 |
132.7 |
138.4 |
| X1900 XT |
82.5 |
103.7 |
116.2 |
126.1 |
131.5 |
| X1800 XT |
70.1 |
83.1 |
89.7 |
95.9 |
98.7 |
| X1900 XF |
107.8 |
170.3 |
217.3 |
246.9 |
259.3 |
| X1800 XF |
104.6 |
151.9 |
171.5 |
186.9 |
192.9 |
pixels x fps - Mpixels per second
Percentage difference
| |
1024x768 |
1280x1024 |
1600x1200 |
2048x1536 |
2560x1600 |
| X1900 XTX to X1900 XT |
3.80% |
4.80% |
5.0% |
5.20% |
5.20% |
| X1900 XTX to X1800 XT |
22.10% |
30.80% |
36.10% |
38.60% |
40.50% |
| X1900 XF to X1800 XF |
3.10% |
12.10% |
26.70% |
32.20% |
34.50% |
percentage
Crossfire Increase
| |
1024x768 |
1280x1024 |
1600x1200 |
2048x1536 |
2560x1600 |
| X1900 |
25.90% |
56.60% |
78.20% |
86.10% |
87.30% |
| X1800 |
49.0% |
82.70% |
91.50% |
95.10% |
95.60% |
percentage
The fill-rate graph highlights that at 1600x1200 and beyond all the boards are getting much more fill-rate limited, or limited on the raster operations, even the Crossfire configurations. The average rendering performance of the X1900 XTX at 2560x1600 is a bit above 30 FPS, with it having a 41% performance advantage over the X1800 XT. The Crossfire configurations, especially in the X1900's case, make rendering at these resolutions quite feasible with the average rendering performance above 60 FPS at 2560x1600, representing an 87% performance increase over a single board.
SC:CT 4xAA 8xAF Performance
| |
786432 |
1310720 |
1920000 |
3145728 |
4096000 |
| X1900 XTX |
85.5 |
107 |
120.4 |
131.2 |
138.9 |
| X1900 XT |
82 |
102.1 |
114.8 |
127.4 |
134.8 |
| X1800 XT |
72.3 |
85.2 |
92.5 |
99.7 |
103.2 |
| X1900 XF |
110 |
171.2 |
217.9 |
249.8 |
266.2 |
| X1800 XF |
107.1 |
156.4 |
177.4 |
194.7 |
202.8 |
pixels x fps - Mpixels per second
Percentage difference
| |
1024x768 |
1280x1024 |
1600x1200 |
2048x1536 |
2560x1600 |
| X1900 XTX to X1900 XT |
4.20% |
4.70% |
4.90% |
3.10% |
3.10% |
| X1900 XTX to X1800 XT |
18.30% |
25.50% |
30.0% |
31.80% |
34.30% |
| X1900 XF to X1800 XF |
2.70% |
9.50% |
22.80% |
28.30% |
31.40% |
percentage
Crossfire Increase
| |
1024x768 |
1280x1024 |
1600x1200 |
2048x1536 |
2560x1600 |
| X1900 |
28.70% |
60.0% |
81.0% |
90.30% |
91.80% |
| X1800 |
48.30% |
83.40% |
91.70% |
95.40% |
96.10% |
percentage
Rendering without Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory's HDR mode, but with 4x FSAA and 8x AF produces similar performances, although because this has a little more onus on texturing and bandwidth the X1800 XT is closer to the X1900 XTX. In relation to the single card configurations, the gains for Crossfire are even larger with the average performance of the X1900 again over 60 FPS at 2560x1600 even with 4x FSAA and 8x AF applied. |
