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Performance

The results:

Catalyst 4.12 and 5.7

With Call of Duty, there are differences but hardly noticeable and certainly not significant (3 fps at most). We see a 1 fps difference in Splinter Cell and at most 4 fps difference without 4x AA and 16x AF in F1 Career Challenge. The same with Nascar 2003. Looks like ATI hit it off right at the start with Catalyst 4.12. Later driver versions are mainly focused at squashing bugs.

Forceware 66.81 and 77.72

Looks like even the 66.81 is not bug free, at least with Call of Duty. During testing, an anomaly occur at 1280 x 1024, 32 bit (dropping further than it should – below 100 fps). Restarting the game several times fixed the problem. For both 1024 x 768, 32 bit and 1600 x 1200, 32 bit, the results from both driver versions are more or less the same (at most 5 fps from a 140 fps result). The Caspian Oil Refinery test results only differs by 1 fps, confirmed by Tbilisi Police Precinct demo with the 66.81 being faster. The bug in Forceware 77.72 makes F1 Career Challenge definitely unplayable with 4x AA and 16x AF. But we could already see the influence even in without AA and AF in resolutions higher than 1024 x 768, 32 bit. For Nascar 2003, the 77.72 is slower except at 1600 x 1200, 4x AA and 16x AF. In this regard, the Forceware 66.81 is the better driver: its faster, has no bug in Splinter Cell and F1 Career Challenge plus it maintains image quality when used without AA and AF in Nascar 2003.

Catalyst 5.7 and 66.81/77.72

Image quality wise, this is the most ideal comparison between the Radeon X700 Pro and GeForce 6600GT under the circumstances. The score from Forceware 77.72 is included just as a reminder.

In Call of Duty, we're seeing a difference between 6 fps in 1024 x 768, 32 bit to 20 fps in 1600 x 1200, 32 bit which is quite significant. With 4x AA and 16x AF, the differences are 19 fps in 1024 x 768, 32 bit and 14 fps in 1600 x 1200, 32 bit. While these differences are significant, that doesn't mean the Radeon X700 is not suited for Call of Duty – it can still provide an average 108.8 fps in 1024 x 768, 32 bit and still playable at 62.4 fps in 1600 x 1200, 32 bit with 4x AA and 16x AF.

There's no doubt that Splinter Cell runs faster on the GeForce 6600GT. NVIDIA's hardware is just more efficient with rendering shadows under projector mode. We're seeing a difference of 13.68 average fps between the two. This difference can also be seen in the minimum fps – 9.88 fps. Unfortunately, that difference narrows at 1280 x 1024, 32 bit and 1600 x 1200, 32 bit. If you look at these results, this demo only gives playable results for both cards in 1024 x 768, 32 bit color – anything higher and you're dipping below 30 fps at some point. Please keep in mind these situations don't occur all the time, only on levels with lots of lights and shadows.

In F1 Career Challenge, the Radeon X700 Pro is faster without AA and AF up to 1280 x 1024, 32 bit. In 1600 x 1200, 32 bit the GeForce 6600GT has a faster average fps, but both cards have the same minimum fps. With 4xAA and 16xAF, the GeForce 6600GT takes the lead, right up to 1600 x 1200, 32 bit where both cards are barely passing the 30 fps mark. The results from Forceware 66.81 certainly proves that the GeForce 6600GT has what it takes for fluid gameplay with AA and AF. The Radeon X700 Pro is faster than GeForce 6600GT without AA and AF, so what happened here? The performance hit with AA and AF shouldn't be that big. Apparently, the answer lies in texture filtering. Changing the image quality slider in Forceware doesn't have any performance or quality effects, but doing the same thing with the Texture Preference slider in Catalyst does – performance wise! As far as we can tell, there's no difference in image quality even under High Performance mode. This is more of an acceptable compromise for users than not rendering shadows at all to get playable frame rates with Forceware 77.72. For this article, we're sticking to the default Texture Preference (High Quality).

For the most part, Nascar 2003 behaves the same way with both cards. We can see there's a performance difference, but they are hardly noticeable. Only on 1600 x 1200, 32 bit with 4x AA and 16xAF does the difference become noticeable (7 fps).

Combined with what we discover with our image comparison test, the picture is not very clear. Under Forceware 68.11, two games - Call of Duty and Splinter Cell – are faster with and without AA and AF on the GeForce 6600GT with no noticeable image quality differences. F1 Career Challenge is faster without AA and AF on the Radeon X700 Pro, but only through adjustment on the Texture Preference slider we see a closer gap (4 to 6 fps) between the two cards with AA and AF. On the other hand, Nascar is just the Radeon X700 Pro home ground: better image quality without AA and AF plus faster performance.

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