Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness

Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness is currently still one of the few titles to utilise much DirectX9 functionality in the game. Here we'll be using our own internal benchmark demo.

TR:AoD (FPS) 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x960 1600x1200
6800 Ultra 133.3 130.6 108.8 87.6 65.0
5950 Ultra 105.8 82.9 53.9 38.5 25.8
5900 Ultra 115.8 92.9 61.3 45.6 30.7
5800 Ultra 85.6 62.1 39.7 27.5 15.1
6800 Ultra % Difference 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x960 1600x1200
5950 Ultra 26.0% 57.6% 101.9% 127.3% 151.9%
5900 Ultra 15.1% 40.6% 77.3% 92.0% 112.0%
5800 Ultra 55.8% 110.4% 173.7% 218.1% 331.9%

The performance difference between the 6800 Ultra and the 5950 somewhat mirrors some of the Pixel Shader tests we looked at before, with the 5950 being very fill-rate (Pixel Shader) bound, even at fairly low resolutions, but the 6800 being much more capable and using its shader architecture to good effect in this game environment. Although the 6800 Ultra does get increasingly more fill-rate limited as the resolution increases, it doesn't appear that it is entirely so even at 1600x1200, and by this high resolution it has nearly 3 times the performance advantage over the 5950.

TR:AoD - 4X FSAA + 8X AF (FPS) 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x960 1600x1200
6800 Ultra 122.4 105.9 81.1 62.3 43.8
5950 Ultra 84.1 61.8 40.2 28.4 19.0
5900 Ultra 90.1 66.8 43.9 31.9 21.4
5800 Ultra 63.7 44.9 27.9

6800 Ultra % Difference 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x960 1600x1200
5950 Ultra 45.5% 71.2% 101.7% 119.6% 130.2%
5900 Ultra 35.8% 58.4% 84.8% 95.6% 104.7%
5800 Ultra 92.2% 135.9% 190.2%

In comparison to normal rendering, the performance difference between the 6800 Ultra and the 5950 is higher at lower resolutions and lower at high resolutions with 4X FSAA and 8X AF enabled. The slight lowering of performance difference at high resolution is likely due to the increased bandwidth requirements of FSAA, though the large performance disparity between the two, with relatively low bandwidth differences, suggests that the colour compression with 6800 Ultra is working more effectively than 5950.

6800 Ultra (FPS) 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x960 1600x1200
Normal 133.3 130.6 108.8 87.6 65.0
8X AF 133.3 127.7 104.7 84.3 61.8
4X FSAA 125.5 110.3 84.6 64.9 45.8
4X FSAA + 8X AF 122.4 105.9 81.1 62.3 43.8
% Diff from Normal 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x960 1600x1200
8X AF 0.0% -2.3% -3.7% -3.8% -5.0%
4X FSAA -5.9% -15.6% -22.3% -25.9% -29.5%
4X FSAA + 8X AF -8.2% -19.0% -25.4% -28.9% -32.6%

Looking at the the performances of the 6800 Ultra under the various rendering modes we see that the performance under normal rendering is high, with a performance grater than 60 FPS even at 1600x1200. Applying 8X AF doesn't incur that much of a performance hit, at worst 5%, probably because this will be fairly bandwidth and occasionally shader limited, and the average performance is again over 60 FPS at 1600x1200. Enabling 4X FSAA takes a greater performance hit, again suggesting that there are bandwidth limitations, but the performance with both straight AA and with 8X AF enabled as well is still above 60 FPS at 1280x960.