Testbed and Methods

To test the performance of ATI Radeon HD 2900 Pro in popular contemporary applications we assembled the following standard test platform:

• Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor (3.0GHz, FSB 1333MHz x 9);  
• DFI LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R/G mainboard (AMD RD600 chipset) for ATI Radeon based graphics cards;
• Asus P5N32-E SLI mainboard (Nvidia nForce 680i SLI chipset) for Nvidia GeForce based graphics cards;
• Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C5 (2x1GB, 1066MHz, 5-5-5-15, 2T);
• Maxtor MaXLine III 7B250S0 HDD (250GB, Serial ATA-150, 16MB buffer);
• Enermax Galaxy DXX EGX1000EWL 1000W power supply;
• Dell 3007WFP monitor (30", 2560x1600@60Hz max display resolution);
• Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit;
• ATI Catalyst 7.10;
• Nvidia ForceWare 163.69.

Since we believe that the use of texture filtering optimizations is not justified in this case, the ATI and Nvidia graphics card drivers were set up to provide the highest possible quality of tri-linear and anisotropic filtering. Also, to ensure maximum image quality, we enabled transparent texture filtering - Adaptive (super-sampling) antialiasing for ATI Catalyst and Antialiasing – Transparency: multisampling for Nvidia ForceWare. As a result, our ATI and Nvidia driver settings looked as follows:

ATI Catalyst:

• Catalyst A.I.: Standard
• Mipmap Detail Level: High Quality
• Wait for vertical refresh: Always off
• Adaptive antialiasing: On
• Temporal antialiasing: Off
• High Quality AF: On
• Other settings: by default

Nvidia ForceWare:

• Texture filtering - Quality: High quality
• Texture filtering - Trilinear optimization: Off
• Texture filtering – Anisotropic sample optimization: Off
• Vertical sync: Force off
• Antialiasing - Gamma correction: On
• Antialiasing - Transparency: Multisampling
• Other settings: by default

For our tests we used the following games and benchmarks:

First-Person 3D Shooters

• Battlefield 2142
• Bioshock
• Call of Juarez
• Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
• Far Cry
• F.E.A.R. Extraction Point
• Half-Life 2: Episode One
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

Third-Person 3D Shooters

• Lost Planet: Extreme Condition
• Tomb Raider: Legend
• Splinter Cell: Double Agent

RPG

• Gothic 3
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Simulators

• X3: Reunion

Strategies

• Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars
• Company of Heroes

Synthetic Benchmarks

• Futuremark 3DMark05
• Futuremark 3DMark06

We selected the highest possible graphics quality level in each game using standard tools provided by the game itself from the gaming menu. The games configuration files and Windows registry weren’t modified in any way. Performance was measured with the games’ own tools or, if not available, manually with Fraps utility version 2.9.1. We also measured the minimum speed of the cards where possible.

ATI Radeon HD 2900 Pro will be competing against the following graphics accelerators participating in our test session:

• ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB (R600, 742/1650MHz, 320sp, 16tmu, 16rop, 512-bit, 512MB GDDR3)
• ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT GDDR4 (RV630, 800/2200MHz, 120sp, 8tmu, 4rop, 128-bit, 256MB GDDR4)
• Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB (G80, 513/1188/1600MHz, 96sp, 24tmu, 20rop, 320-bit, 320MB GDDR3)
• Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS (G84, 675/1450/2000MHz, 32sp, 16tmu, 8rop, 128-bit, 256MB GDDR3)

All of them belong to sub-$300 solutions except ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT that was taken as a reference for this test session. It will help us estimate how the performance of R600 solutions drops depending on the GPU frequency reduction.