Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory was tested using the Lighthouse demo. The shader profile for SM2.0 was used and options such as parallax mapping and high quality soft shadows were enabled.
A more graphically intense title than the three flight simulations tested, Chaos Theory shows a larger performance delta between the two boards. The 1900 starts off with a significant lead of 20% over the 1800 and widens that margin with the higher resolutions. By 1920×1200 the 1900 commands a 40% lead, and with the small clock speed difference between the two parts this delta is most likely the result of the larger Z-buffer cache.
The 1900 starts off again with a solid 20% lead and increases it to 30% by the highest resolution. This margin isn’t as wide as the vanilla 1920×1200 scores, but worth noting is that the XTX only has 1.6 GB/sec memory bandwidth over the X1800 XT, so this could definitely impact high resolutions combined with anti-aliasing. Nevertheless, 54 fps at tested settings is nothing to scoff at.
Call of Duty 2 was tested with a custom demo from the Prisoners of War single-player map. The game was configured in its DX9 rendering mode with all texture options manually set at high.
Similar to Chaos Theory, Infinity Ward’s new WWII shooter shows the 1900 with a commanding lead of roughly 30% across the tested resolutions. Both boards, however, lose roughly half their frame rate across the resolution range.
The 1800 again falls behind the refresh part by closer to 20% in each resolution, though both boards produce playable frame rates even at 1920×1200.