Performance in First-Person 3D Shooters

Battlefield 2

This game still does not support non-standard antialiasing modes, so we benchmarked the cards at 4x FSAA + 16x AF only.

The GeForce 8800 GTX takes a good start, outperforming the Radeon X1950 XTX CrossFire system (by 10-12%), not to mention single last-generation cards.

The results of the GeForce 7950 Quad SLI platform are disappointing. Nothing has changed since our review of that technology ?it is still a little slower than the single GeForce 7950 GX2 in this game.

None of the cards has any problems with performance here. You get no less than 66fps at 1600x1200 with enabled 4x FSAA even on a single GeForce 7900 GTX.

Battlefield 2142

This sequel to the Battlefield series brings the player into the future, into the year of 2142, to be exact. And you find yourself right in the heat of a battle between two superpowers ?the European Union and the Pan Asian Coalition. The game offers the player a number of exciting ways to pass away the time like piloting various battle machinery, including gigantic robots, or engaging into a team combat in the Titan mode. In this mode, the goal of a team of players is to protect a huge flying platform called Titan while attacking a similar enemy platform.

From a technical point of view, the game isn?t much different from the original as it runs on the same engine with certain modifications and only boasts more of special effects. Non-standard antialiasing modes are still not supported, so we had to limit our test to 4x FSAA.

The results are a good illustration of the potential of the GeForce 8800 GTX relative to its opponents.

It is not the GeForce 8800 GTX and even not the quad-processor GeForce 7950 Quad SLI, but the ordinary GeForce 7900 GTX SLI tandem that is the leader at the resolution of 1280x1024 pixels. At 1600x1200, however, it has to give way to Nvidia?s new graphics card that has a faster memory subsystem. Note that the GeForce 8800 GTX doesn?t lose much speed switching to the higher resolution whereas the speed of the 7900 GTX SLI in 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 differs dramatically.

The GeForce 7900 GTX is the only single graphics card to deliver too low performance in 1600x1200. The Radeon X1950 XTX and the GeForce 7950 GX2 both ensure a comfortable frame rate in this mode.