Performance in First-Person 3D Shooters

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

The central processor limits the speed of the whole system in low resolutions, but in 1600x1200 the Radeon X1900 XT CrossFire is only 10% ahead of the Radeon X1800 XT CrossFire although the game uses SM3.0 and HDR.

The new CrossFire pair enjoys the same or slightly bigger advantage in the Super AA 8x mode. The resolution of 1600x1200 seems to be playable now with more comfort ?this is the only tangible effect of the 96 pixel processors here.

The same is true for the Super AA 14x mode: the threefold increase of the pixel processors yields a mere 10-12% of performance growth even in a game which is rich in advanced pixel shaders.

Note that the GeForce 7800 GTX SLI configuration ensures a good speed in the SLI AA mode in 1280x1024 resolution and an excellent speed in 1024x768.