ATI's X1000 Series: Extended Performance Testing

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Performance

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is a beautiful stealth action game that makes excellent use of light and shadow. Their extended SM3.0 features are beautiful, but we tested without SM3.0 enabled for consistency. These numbers are based on the lighthouse demo that comes with the games, and we used the benchmark scripts created by Reverend of Beyond3d.

This is one of the few games that shows the X1800 XT with a clear lead over the 7800 GTX with no AA enabled. The 7800 GT still bests the X1800 XL, and the X1600 again performs on par with a much cheaper part in the 6600 GT.



Turning on AA serves to increase the X1800 XT performance advantage considerably. The future high end part from ATI will allow Splinter Cell 3 to run at 2048x1536 with 4xAA and 8xAF at a playable frame rate. The X1800XL competes directly with the 7800 GTX in this benchmark with the 7800 GT lagging behind. In this way, Splinter Cell shows us something almost the reverse of Doom 3 and Chronicles of Riddick performance.

While the X1600 XT does post better numbers than the 6600 GT, we will be more interested in how the cheaper X1600 parts will hold up against the very popular NVIDIA mid-range part.



Once again, we see the X1800 XT handle the impact of antialiasing better than all the other parts. The X1800 XL also adapts better than the NVIDIA cards. While the 6800 GT keeps up with the X1600 XT in terms of AA impact, the 6600 GT doesn't do quite as well.