Benchmarks - Call of Duty (OpenGL)

Here we'll look at the performance of Radeon X800's under this Quake3 engine based title.

 

CoD (FPS) 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
X800 XT PE 116.5 116.5 116.5 116.4 111.9
X800 PRO 116.5 116.5 116.0 116.7 111.9
9800 XT 117.7 117.5 117.6 114.1 104.2
9800 PRO 116.6 117.1 116.7 112.9 101.5
9700 PRO 116.7 116.9 116.2 109.4 95.4
 
X800 XT PE % Difference 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
X800 PRO 0.0% 0.0% 0.4% -0.3% 0.0%
9800 XT -1.0% -0.9% -0.9% 2.0% 7.4%
9800 PRO -0.1% -0.5% -0.2% 3.1% 10.2%
9700 PRO -0.2% -0.3% 0.3% 6.4% 17.3%
 
X800 PRO % Difference 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
9800 XT -1.0% -0.9% -1.4% 2.3% 7.4%
9800 PRO -0.1% -0.5% -0.6% 3.4% 10.2%
9700 PRO -0.2% -0.3% -0.2% 6.7% 17.3%

As we've seen elsewhere, both the X800's are entirely CPU limited on this test system and this CoD demo, and so too, largely, is the 9800 XT so there is very little performance difference between the new generation or previous generation Radeon's here.

 

CoD - 4X FSAA + 16X AF (FPS) 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
X800 XT PE 115.7 116.2 113.5 99.9 86.1
X800 PRO 117.2 116.0 111.4 89.6 73.3
9800 XT 106.1 104.7 97.9 85.0 66.7
9800 PRO 113.7 108.3 93.1 67.0 32.4
9700 PRO 112.1 104.6 87.3 60.6 30.0
 
X800 XT PE % Difference 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
X800 PRO -1.3% 0.2% 1.9% 11.5% 17.5%
9800 XT 9.0% 11.0% 15.9% 17.5% 29.1%
9800 PRO 1.8% 7.3% 21.9% 49.1% 165.7%
9700 PRO 3.2% 11.1% 30.0% 64.9% 187.0%
 
X800 PRO % Difference 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
9800 XT 10.5% 10.8% 13.8% 5.4% 9.9%
9800 PRO 3.1% 7.1% 19.7% 33.7% 126.2%
9700 PRO 4.5% 10.9% 27.6% 47.9% 144.3%

With 4X FSAA and 16X AF enabled we can begin to see a bit of a performance gap opening between the boards, but for the most part things still seem to be fairly CPU limited. The X800 XT PE shows a performance difference of 29% to the 9800 XT whilst the X800 PRO about 10%.

 

X800 XT PE (FPS) 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
Normal 116.5 116.5 116.5 116.4 111.9
16X AF 116.2 116.3 116.9 114.3 101.6
4X FSAA 116.2 116.2 115.3 106.6 102.8
4X FSAA + 16X AF 115.7 116.2 113.5 99.9 86.1
 
% Diff from Normal 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
16X AF -0.3% -0.2% 0.3% -1.8% -9.2%
4X FSAA -0.3% -0.3% -1.0% -8.4% -8.1%
4X FSAA + 16X AF -0.7% -0.3% -2.6% -14.2% -23.1%

On the X800 XT we can see that, at 1600x1200, enabling 16X FSAA has more of a performance penalty from normal rendering than enabling 4X FSAA. With both enabled there is a 23% performance drop from normal rendering at 1600x1200, and this is the only case where the average performance drops below 100 FPS.

 

X800 PRO (FPS) 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
Normal 116.5 116.5 116.0 116.7 111.9
16X AF 115.8 115.6 116.1 108.1 95.4
4X FSAA 115.8 115.8 116.8 104.9 96.6
4X FSAA + 16X AF 117.2 116.0 111.4 89.6 73.3
 
% Diff from Normal 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
16X AF -0.6% -0.8% 0.1% -7.4% -14.7%
4X FSAA -0.6% -0.6% 0.7% -10.1% -13.7%
4X FSAA + 16X AF 0.6% -0.4% -4.0% -23.2% -34.5%

The X800 PRO shows its slightly lower fill-rate and bandwidth in comparison to the X800 XT PE here, in that there is about a 14% performance penalty for enabling either 4X FSAA or 16X AF at 1600x1200. With both enabled there is a slightly greater performance drop than the cumulative total of either of the rendering options. However, at 1600x1200 with both of these image quality features enabled the average rendering performance is still well above 60 FPS.