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Games in the Splinter Cell franchise have always been at the forefront with shaders and Chaos Theory is no exception. We're seeing a similar situation like F.E.A.R here. The Radeon X1900 XTX is leaving behind the GeForce 7800GTX by a significant margin. At 1024 x 768, AA and AF results from the Radeon X1900 XTX is on the same level as the GeForce 7800GTX's results under default settings! The lead gets even larger at higher resolutions, you can even turn on 6x AA and HQ AF on the Radeon X1900 XTX at 1600 x 1200 where it still managed to barely reach the 30 minimum fps mark. It will be very interesting to see HDR results with this game (and with Serious Sam II as well).

While 6x AA do come with a minimal performance penalty, it's still fast enough even at 1600 x 1200 (though you wouldn't want to use it on even higher resolutions). As for HQ AF, it's just outstanding - it is virtually penalty free on the Radeon X1900.

	GeForce 7800GTX TOP		GeForce 7800GTX		Radeon X1900 XTX
	Default	4x AA 16x AF	Default	4x AA 16x AF	Default	4x AA 16x AF
<30 fps	0	0	0	0	0	0
30-45 fps	0	0	0	1	0	0
45-60 fps	0	6	0	14	0	0
60-90 fps	13	61	28	81	10	22
90-120 fps	56	24	51	10	53	54
>120 fps	18	9	11	7	20	12
Total	87	99	90	113	83	88

results are in seconds

Just like Quake 4, we're seeing different totals from each column. That's because we're using the built in benchmarking tool to get the results, so they are from a timedemo and not replay hence the different runtimes. With a glance, we can tell that the Radeon X1900 XTX is the fastest card here - it has the smallest runtime. Looking at the specifics, we can see almost no change between default and AA and AF numbers from the Radeon X1900 XTX. The GeForce 7800GTX is a different matter, with AA and AF enabled it dipped to between 45 - 120 fps, as opposed to default range of 60 - 120 fps.

Conclusion:

It's been a long time coming, but the next generation chipset from ATI is finally here. Obviously, we meant the Radeon X1900 and not the Radeon X1800. With its abundant number of pixel shaders, this card should be more than enough for new games availaible today and coming this year Why? Well, isn't obvious. It offers more than high enough frame rates for comfortable fluid gaming, even with demanding titles such as F.E.A.R and Quake 4. There's virtually very minimal performance lost with AA and AF, unlike the GeForce 7800GTX. So, even with newer games that's shader oriented, you shouldn't experience more than minimal lost of frame rate with the Radeon X1900 XTX.

Even more intriguing is the option to enable High Quality AF without any performance hit. Those who want better visuals and is still comfortable with 1024 x 768 can opt to enable 6x AA. While it did come with a minimal penalty, the frame rates should be high enough. For those who want more, either higher resolution and / or higher levels of AA, there's always Crossfire. But that's another article.

Unfortunately, there are some tradeoff you should consider. For one, performance with some texture heavy games can be way below that of a GeForce 7800GTX. Out of our benchmark suite, that will be Brothers in Arms and Serious Sam II. However, do keep in mind that games are transitionin to shaders rather than textures. So, the number of texture dependent games should be decreasing, though not completely gone. Even offline rendering still rely on textures. If you're going to play much of these types of games, it might be wise to wait for the coming GeForce 7900 series. It should offer at least GeForce 7800GTX 512 performance at more affordable prices.

There's also some annyoing things you will probably get use to: mainly ATI's decision to 'force' users to use Catalyst Control Center. Even with the latest drivers, it's still too slow and can be annoying if you repeatedly have to make changes in 3D settings (like AA and AF). Granted, in newer games these settings should be applied in game, but still, what's the point of making life difficult with Catalyst Control Center? Even on a 2 GB system we used for testing, it take some time to start the Control Center, not to mention it also required lots of hard disk access everytime you enter Windows (from a restart).

Overall, while the Radeon X1900 is not always the fastest card around in all games, it is faster with AA and AF and it is faster in new, shader heavy games. Even with texture dependent games, the Radeon X1900 is still able to supply gamers with more than enough frame rates and in most cases still retain the lead with AA and AF enabled. Not only that, it also bring to the table higher quality visuals (HQ AF) with virtually no performance loss.

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