Call of Juarez DX10 Review at the [H]

[Grifter]

[H]ard|OCP (http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/division.html?division=aGVudGh1c2lhc3Q=) has a great review of Call of Juarez (http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTM4NCwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==) under DX10 mode using both ATI's and Nvidia's current offerings.


Aside from evaluating DX10 GPU performance scaling and image quality on current high end video cards, today’s evaluation (http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTM4NCwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==) shines the spotlight on the actual hardware requirements of upcoming DX10 titles. High resolution gaming on video cards with less than 512MB of memory could be a thing of the past.
The Radeon HD 2900 XT matched the 640 MB GeForce 8800GTS for gameplay in DX10 mode but came slightly under it in DX9. Overall all video cards do well except for the 320MB 8800 GTS in DX10. Still, these settings may not seem that high to you compared to older games. It is clear that newer games are definitely pushing today’s hardware harder than ever.


It's nice to see ATI holding it's own against Nvidia again.

[Voodoo]

Nice! Can't wait for the Gemini launch. I'll be grabbing me a 2600XT Gemini probably.

[51|RandoM]

It's nice to see ATI holding it's own against Nvidia again.

...shame it can't do so at the high end.

[Squidbot]

Forgive me if this seems an uneducated question, but why Call of Juarez? Is that all there is in DX10 at the moment?

[Grifter]

...shame it can't do so at the high end.


I really am curious as to what was going on at ATI when they made that decision. Did they mean for the 2900XT to be a midrange card or did it just suck so bad they had no choice? It just seems weird that they would come off such a strong product line with something so week. I guess the same thing happened with nVidia and their FX series.

Alls I know is I can't wait for nVidia's second generation DX10 cards. With Crysis so close waiting is gonna suck.

[Grifter]

Forgive me if this seems an uneducated question, but why Call of Juarez? Is that all there is in DX10 at the moment?

Yeah, for the most part. Call of Juarez is pretty much the only game right now that really takes advantage of quite a few DX10 features. When you read or skim through the article you will see some huge differences between the two versions (DX9&DX10).

With games like Bioshock and Lost Planet the differences are so minimal they really don't matter and in the case of Lost Planet it runs a lot worse.

Just incase you didn't know even though the EU version came out over a year ago the US version just came out a couple months ago with a completely new DX10 rendering path.

[Squidbot]

Ah, okay, that explains a lot, thanks Grif. Still need to give the game another chance as I hated it as soon as it went platform game.

[Voodoo]

I really am curious as to what was going on at ATI when they made that decision. Did they mean for the 2900XT to be a midrange card or did it just suck so bad they had no choice? It just seems weird that they would come off such a strong product line with something so week. I guess the same thing happened with nVidia and their FX series.

Alls I know is I can't wait for nVidia's second generation DX10 cards. With Crysis so close waiting is gonna suck.

Whoever is calling the shots over at ATI for their GPUs is doing a piss poor job. They arrived at the SM3.0 door far too late in the DX9 generation and now they propose a GPU with a huge amount of unified shaders which can't even outperform a GPU with much less of them.

I mean, shit, 2900XT has 320 unified shaders and it can barely keep up or outpace the 96 unified shaders of the 8800GTS. Now the plan is to use the Crossfire-on-a-board approach (Gemini) at the same price point of current cards in order to gain back some extremely lost ground. The 2600XT Gemini is pretty impressive but the 2900XT Gemini is silly on the amount of power it needs...

Me... I'm still sporting my 7600GT SLI setup as I haven't quite had something that pushes me to the new series yet. I'd like to get a 2600XT Gemini but I will wait until I see benchmarks on that thing.

[Varsity]

It's incredible how little difference in image quality there is between the nVidia and ATI cards. Strict standards are good anywhere. :)

Edit: an example for anyone who doesn't want to read the article (http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTE4ODAxODE2MXN0ZWhBcjZyVjFfN183X 2wucG5n).

[Grifter]

Whoever is calling the shots over at ATI for their GPUs is doing a piss poor job. They arrived at the SM3.0 door far too late in the DX9 generation and now they propose a GPU with a huge amount of unified shaders which can't even outperform a GPU with much less of them.

I mean, shit, 2900XT has 320 unified shaders and it can barely keep up or outpace the 96 unified shaders of the 8800GTS. Now the plan is to use the Crossfire-on-a-board approach (Gemini) at the same price point of current cards in order to gain back some extremely lost ground. The 2600XT Gemini is pretty impressive but the 2900XT Gemini is silly on the amount of power it needs...

Me... I'm still sporting my 7600GT SLI setup as I haven't quite had something that pushes me to the new series yet. I'd like to get a 2600XT Gemini but I will wait until I see benchmarks on that thing.

Do you find that 7600GT SLI truly beneficial in most situations? From all the stories I here SLI is pretty much a waist unless under the perfect circumstances (Driver support, game support etc...) Knowing then what you know now would you have stuck with dual 7600s or gone with a single 7900?

[51|RandoM]

Whoever is calling the shots over at ATI for their GPUs is doing a piss poor job. They arrived at the SM3.0 door far too late in the DX9 generation and now they propose a GPU with a huge amount of unified shaders which can't even outperform a GPU with much less of them.

The funny thing is that ATI set themselves up for that particular fall.

In the previous generation their unified shader architecture was the only thing keeping them competitive at the high-end with Nvidia. Next gen rolls around, Nvidia adds unified shader architecture and what does ATI come up with? Nothing.

[KingGorilla]

Forgive me if this seems an uneducated question, but why Call of Juarez? Is that all there is in DX10 at the moment?

It puzzles me as well, I do not remember any re-evaluations of Supreme Commander or Company of Heroes. I also do not recall any sources who reviewed the DX9 and 10 versions of Bioshock separately.

[Voodoo]

Do you find that 7600GT SLI truly beneficial in most situations? From all the stories I here SLI is pretty much a waist unless under the perfect circumstances (Driver support, game support etc...) Knowing then what you know now would you have stuck with dual 7600s or gone with a single 7900?

Yes, the 7600GT SLI setup is performing far beyond my initial expectations BUT I am unable to compare it locally as it is the highest tech setup I have. The reason I wanted to build an SLI was to see if there was any benefit to it first hand. With the 7600GT, it was at an excellent price point that I could execute this test.

Frankly, I'm suprised how well this setup has lasted really...

There have been a few problems, though, with SLI in particular. For example, in Vista, SLI is far worse than Crossfire due to the driver model so I am currently stuck in WinXP. There was one game I had severe trouble with (Company of Heroes) which wasn't patched for many weeks later... Beyond these I haven't had much issue.

Would I build a SLI again? Nope. I'm more impressed with single card solutions or the (hopefully) the Gemini solution. But, at this time, I don't have any game at all that I can not run with my SLI setup at the highest or near highest settings I can go... This is, of course, running on my 19" LCD which has a native resolution of 1280x1024. I also pay close attention to my monitor of choice. I never purchase a monitor which I will always have to have a monster card to drive... My personal limit on total spending on the video card piece is always what I spent on the original Voodoo card... $249. The 7600GT SLI setup was well within $249 at the time I purchased it.

Sorry for the ramble... To answer your original question... Yes I would have, if it were under $249, picked a more powerful single card solution at the time I build the 7600GT SLI setup. ;)

[Grifter]

It puzzles me as well, I do not remember any re-evaluations of Supreme Commander or Company of Heroes. I also do not recall any sources who reviewed the DX9 and 10 versions of Bioshock separately.

The Firing Squad did a review on Bioshock and touched on it's DX10 features. [H] also did a DX10 review of Lost Planet.
This isn't a re-evaluation, Call of Juarez was just released here in the states a couple of months ago with full DX10 compatibility. This is also the first game that is noticeably different depending on the render path you choose. I am sure that when World of Conflict comes out they will do a DX10 review for that as well and we will definitely see one for Crysis.

Yes, the 7600GT SLI setup is performing far beyond my initial expectations BUT I am unable to compare it locally as it is the highest tech setup I have. The reason I wanted to build an SLI was to see if there was any benefit to it first hand. With the 7600GT, it was at an excellent price point that I could execute this test.

Frankly, I'm suprised how well this setup has lasted really...

There have been a few problems, though, with SLI in particular. For example, in Vista, SLI is far worse than Crossfire due to the driver model so I am currently stuck in WinXP. There was one game I had severe trouble with (Company of Heroes) which wasn't patched for many weeks later... Beyond these I haven't had much issue.

Would I build a SLI again? Nope. I'm more impressed with single card solutions or the (hopefully) the Gemini solution. But, at this time, I don't have any game at all that I can not run with my SLI setup at the highest or near highest settings I can go... This is, of course, running on my 19" LCD which has a native resolution of 1280x1024. I also pay close attention to my monitor of choice. I never purchase a monitor which I will always have to have a monster card to drive... My personal limit on total spending on the video card piece is always what I spent on the original Voodoo card... $249. The 7600GT SLI setup was well within $249 at the time I purchased it.

Sorry for the ramble... To answer your original question... Yes I would have, if it were under $249, picked a more powerful single card solution at the time I build the 7600GT SLI setup.


Thanks Voodoo. I like the long rambles, the more info I can get the better.

[KingGorilla]

This is mostly for Voodoo. The differences between the 8 series and the R600 are eerily similar to the differences between the 7 series and the 1k line. You are not going to see discernable differences in performance with FEAR, Doom 3, Prey between those cards. But Black and White 2 had a world of difference in performance and visual quality, as did Oblivion. With the new drivers from ATI, I would be interrested in seeing the CoH and Sup Comm benchmarks for the cards. The last set I saw had the 2900XT slightly edging out the 8800GTS(640MB). When I went with the 1900 XT that I bought last year, it was because I want the most when I play large, open world, large scale games, not corridor shooters. With Oblivion marks, notice how many testers made note of performance in dungeons vs the Elven Gardens, due to all the rendering differences between zones.

I just hope that the drivers for both are in a decent way once Crysis debuts, it would really suck for a buyer of either set of cards to get fucked out of performance because ATI and NvIdia have been very sluggish in getting better drivers out.