Gaming Benchmarks (Cont.)

Let's continue with the next games we have selected, being Far Cry and X³: Reunion. Both games who are very popular amongst gamers and that will give a good idea on the performance delivered by the Radeon X1600 PRO. What is different with the previous games titles is actually the 3D engine which is build around DirectX specifications, so no OpenGL.

Who doesn't know the game Far Cry? It was the game that came out right before Half-Life 2, Doom 3 and so on and set some new standards in gaming experience. Without a doubt, Far Cry was the most advanced graphics seen in any PC game. Everything in this game looks amazing, and the level of verisimilitude is unprecedented. Far Cry isn't just a stunning technical accomplishment. It's quite possibly the best single player first person shooter experience for the PC since Half-Life. Since Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 came out Far Cry had to share the welt on de gaming market.

Far Cry - 1024x768 Gaming Results

	GeForce 6800 GT	Radeon X1600 PRO
No AA	53.54 fps	57.62 fps
4x AA	53.40 fps	48.19 fps
HDR	48.07 fps	57.36 fps

Far Cry - 1280x1024 Gaming Results

	GeForce 6800 GT	Radeon X1600 PRO
No AA	52.72 fps	49.59 fps
4x AA	51.58 fps	33.66 fps
HDR	35.73 fps	48.15 fps

Far Cry keeps amazing me with the game play itself; on top of that it is one excellent game to checkout the performance of a graphics card. And on that we can say that both cards perform quite similar, although when the higher resolutions come into play the PowerColor Radeon X1600 PRO is trailing a bit behind. Far Cry is also the one game where you can enable HDR. This comes in handy as it adds some more complexity and processing towards the video accelerator. The Radeon X1600 PRO definitely has the edge when HDR is enabled and performs noticeably better then the older GeForce 6800 GT.

One of the newer games goes by the name, X³: Reunion. This is a sequel to the award winning X²: The Threat game. Extensive development has gone into the X³ engine, making use of DirectX 9.0 technology, to create dramatic visual effects and stunningly realistic starships. Coupled with the massively enhanced artificial life system, X³: Reunion will present players with an ever changing, evolving universe; where a players action really can shape the future of the universe.

X³: Reunion - 1024x768 Gaming Results

	GeForce 6800 GT	Radeon X1600 PRO
No AA	37.738 fps	38.878 fps
4x AA	36.954 fps	35.083 fps

X³: Reunion - 1280x1024 Gaming Results

	GeForce 6800 GT	Radeon X1600 PRO
No AA	34.568 fps	30.791 fps
4x AA	30.803 fps	25.536 fps

What do these gaming results show us? Let's start by saying that both cards do somehow equally perform, with the GeForce 6800 GT putting down the slightly higher scores. Both cards do perform well and show that the Radeon X1600 PRO with less processing power, but higher clock speeds can somehow stay on track in terms of gaming performance. When we go up with the screen resolution or enabling AA function the GeForce 6800 GT steps up once again to make the gap a tad bigger.