IL-2: Forgotten Battles – Aces Expansion Pack was used to test the performance impact A.I. has on texture filtering with 8x anisotropic enabled.
Image quality differences with A.I. disabled or set at low are extremely difficult to discern, with a slight increase in texture aliasing in certain titles being the most noticeable effect. Once set to high, however, the more aggressive filtering algorithm results in a perceptible banding in textures that would be expected when bilinear filtering was in use, though not quite as apparent as true bilinear. And as the scores above demonstrate, A.I. has a strong impact on performance, with the setting low increasing test scores by 30-50% over regular 8x AF and high returning the frame rate to numbers almost identical to those without anisotropic filtering enabled. Those desiring the best image quality possible for their games, however, will want to leave A.I. either turned off or set at low, though ATi should be congratulated for allowing users the choice through the CCC.
Overclocking
To see how well the Radeon X800 XT would run above its default clock settings for both the chip and onboard memory, the Catalyst Control Center’s Overdrive option was enabled and IL2: FB AEP again ran through a variety of tests. SimHQ, however, strongly stresses that the overclocking results of one review board cannot serve as an adequate sampling by which to judge an entire product line, and for our readers to please keep this in mind while considering the following benchmarks.
With Overdrive enabled the chip clock speed was increased to a paltry 506 MHz while the memory maintained its default of 500 MHz. With the Platinum Editions clocked a mere 20 MHz faster than the XTs, it’s no surprise that 500+ MHz appears to be the threshold for these chips. As for the memory, the Samsung modules are rated at 2ns and a frequency of 500 MHz, so it’s unsurprising that the onboard RAM would overclock poorly, if at all.
Gallery
All pictures were taken at 1024×768 using 4x anti-aliasing and 8x anisotropic filtering.
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| Far Cry (2.25MB) |
NASCAR Racing 2003 Season (2.25MB) |
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| Rome: Total War (2.25MB) |
Valve’s Video Stress Test (2.25MB) |
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