Review: ATI Radeon X1900 XTX

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Pacific Fighters was run in OpenGL mode with all video options set to high (landscape at perfect) and tested using the "F4Utt" track. The conf.ini file was edited to enable the two non-4:3 ratio resolutions of 1280x1024 and 1920x1200. ATI boards perform better in IL2 games in D3D mode, but we wanted to test with the landscape option set at perfect; Pacific Fighters in OpenGL mode also represents the one title in SimHQ's current benchmark suite that uses the API.

Pacific Fighter shows a fairly significant performance delta between the two boards, particularly as the resolution scaled upwards. The X1900 starts at less than 10% ahead of the 1800 and finishes at almost 25% faster.

High quality shows a similar pattern for the two boards, with the 1900 outperforming the older board by a noticeable margin. Both boards see their frame rates roughly halved from lowest to highest resolution.

Microsoft's Flight Simulator 2004 was configured with high settings enabled across its four display panels, with the max texture slider set at full and hardware lights at four. SimHQ's demo is a short dusk flight over Hong Kong city.

The X1800 trailed behind its refresh by roughly 10% at the 1024x768, with the gap marginally closing at the higher resolutions.

Like Flaming Cliffs, 2004 also failed to render FS 2004 at 1920x1200 with anti-aliasing functioning. Regardless, the 1900 consistently stayed ahead by 10% across the tested resolutions, which, again, like Flaming Cliffs is hardly a performance delta that justifies the added cost of the refresh part for those looking at a new, high-end graphics board.

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