Mainstream

Easy to see, the resolution of 1920x1200 pixels is too hard for mainstream graphics cards irrespective of the generation they belong to. The ATI Radeon X1950 Pro looks best of all, yet it cannot provide the required minimum of 30fps.

At a resolution of 1600x1200 all the cards in this category are somewhere around the 30fps mark. The Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS with its 20 TMUs and 16 raster operators is in the lead, but the GeForce 8600 GTS and Radeon X1950 Pro are a mere 0.1 and 0.5fps behind it, respectively. The ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT takes last place as it has only 8 TMUs and 4 ROPs.

Anyway, none of the mainstream graphics cards can provide any reserve of speed in that resolution, so you have to lower the resolution or the level of detail.

Nvidia’s solutions are better in 1024x768, too. And the GeForce 8600 GTS is again slightly ahead of the GeForce 7900 GS despite the 128-bit memory bus. However, they are not far better than ATI’s cards. The Radeon X1950 Pro and Radeon HD 2600 XT can be used just as well. They provide the necessary minimum of speed with a surplus even. Note that the owner of a Radeon X1950 Pro or GeForce 7900 GS doesn’t have to upgrade to a modern DirectX 10 compliant card from the same price category because this wouldn’t give him any performance gains.