2007 Graphics Performance Charts

The Never-ending Graphics Cycle

The past few months have been relatively peaceful in the graphics scene. What with both ATI and NVIDIA having released their mainstream and lower end products a few months back, marking the end of the graphics lifecycle for the current generation. Going by the cyclical nature of this industry, the chipmakers are probably prepping enhancements to their existing products and unsurprisingly, the rumors have started to appear, with Digitimes quoting an unconfirmed date of November 12 for the next update of NVIDIA's GeForce 8 mid-range products, codenamed G92. For enthusiasts, it's time to start second guessing the likely performance of these new GPUs compared to the incumbents.

No doubt, we can assume that ATI is working hard to massage its product lineup into a more palatable form, especially with its painful lack of a high-end contender to match NVIDIA. Meanwhile, we have taken the opportunity of this lull in graphics development to get our own testing completed for all contemporary graphics chipsets available now. Since this period is arguably a transition phase, with DirectX 10 still in its infancy, we have included both the GeForce 7 and 8 series from NVIDIA, along with ATI's Radeon X1000 and HD series in this graphics benchmarking comparison. Hopefully, our benchmarks will help you decide which graphics card best suit your needs now. So without further ado, we'll start with the major chipsets of the last generation, NVIDIA's GeForce 7 and ATI's Radeon X1000 series.

Consolidation Vs Revolution (or G70 Vs R520)

Personally, we feel that those two words best sums up the two different approaches taken by the two major graphics companies for the GeForce 7 and the Radeon X1000 series of graphics products. While NVIDIA further consolidated its position by building on the architecture of the successful GeForce 6, ATI went through a major architectural overhaul that eventually culminated in a production delay, with the end result the R520 debuting as a huge and comparatively warmer GPU that had the performance but couldn't compete in other ways with the earlier released G70 that was relatively cooler, cost less to manufacture and most importantly, were widely available in stores at a far earlier time frame.

Widely anticipated, the R520 was released months after the G70. Supply was limited compared to the various GeForce 7 models already on retail shelves, making it in essence, a disappointing paper launch. On paper however, it was a rather impressive piece of engineering, with many new innovations like its ring bus memory architecture, a new ultra threaded shader engine, advanced HDR rendering and full Shader Model 3.0 support. A subsequent refresh, the Radeon X1900 series (using the R580 core) solved some of these issues and significantly improved the performance but the initial delay meant that ATI had a difficult task ahead recapturing the market with its expensive albeit powerful cards. NVIDIA had the upper hand when it came to sales figures and more misery was to follow for the red team. That about sums the events involving that generation of GPUs, so here's a rundown of the more commonly sought after cards in the retail market and their key specs:-

Doing it the Right Way

While ATI slowly climbed back into the reckoning with further revisions to the R580 core and the release of 80nm GPUs like the ones used on the Radeon X1950 PRO and Radeon X1650 XT, NVIDIA managed to keep up with its own updates. The GeForce 7900 and 7600 series in particular were for the most part, competitive with ATI's offerings and they were popular and widely available also. Our found this large segment to favor NVIDIA's products due to their better value, even if ATI may have the performance edge at times. Prices were falling as the competition heated up with products for virtually every major price point while both sides fuelled the rivalry with tidbits about their next generation products, with DirectX 10 support obviously one of the key talking points.

This time round, it was NVIDIA's turn to produce a new architecture that would have all the latest features necessary to support DirectX 10. The resultant GPU, the 90nm G80 took the industry by storm, as once again NVIDIA was first out of the blocks, with a radical design that's completely different from the GeForce 7 series. The chipmaker had held its cards closely for so long that most of us were quite surprised when the G80 came out ahead of ATI's equivalent R600.

It featured a new unified shader architecture with a more efficient and multi-threaded utilization rate for its general processing units and new anti-aliasing and HDR rendering modes that bring it on par with ATI's Radeon X1000 series. More was to follow with the mid-range and lower end variants, all boasting a new video processor (VP2) that takes over the majority of tasks for decoding high definition videos from the CPU. Although power consumption could be a problem for the high-end cards, the performance and the street availability were impressive and with ATI struggling with the R600, NVIDIA had the head start again.

Adding to the turmoil surrounding ATI was its multi-billion dollar purchase by AMD in the middle of 2006. The proceedings of the acquisition were not completed till October but it probably had some effect on the launch of the R600, which finally came to light in May 2007, roughly six months after the G80. Yet again, ATI lead the standings with the size of its GPU, packing in around 700 million transistors and despite an 80nm manufacturing process, it's a large chip by any standards. As expected, ATI has had to change their architecture to a similarly unified shader model but the company went for a superscalar design with parallel instructions executed by SIMD arrays of shader processors. A new dispatch processor to feed these arrays was implemented while the Radeon X1000 lived on in some form, with a similar but improved ring bus memory architecture on the R600.

Like the GeForce 8 series, a new video processor (UVD) was added for the mid-range and entry level graphics products, the Radeon HD 2600 and 2400 series but due to the vague marketing materials, most of the media and end users were led to believe that the UVD was also found on the high-end Radeon HD 2900 XT when it was not. Performance wise, ATI grasped that its best graphics card, the Radeon HD 2900 XT, even with its fast DDR4 memory speeds, could not compete against NVIDIA's big guns and hence the chipmaker priced it competitively below the GeForce 8800 GTX, meaning that it competed against (and mostly excelled) the slower GeForce 8800 GTS instead. Like the R520, only the top SKU, the Radeon HD 2900 XT was available for sale in May/June, with the lesser cards like the Radeon HD 2600 and 2400 launched later in July.

Which finally brings us to now, with both ATI and NVIDIA having played all their cards and though DirectX 10 games are mostly delayed, at least there are some viable choices from the entry level to the high-end when it came to DirectX 10 compatible graphics cards. In just a short while, we'll be bringing you the benchmarks of all the graphics cards featured so far or you could skip the test setup page and jump straight to the numbers.

Test Setup

All the graphics cards were tested on our usual test system which has an Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 processor (2.66GHz) and 2GB of low latency DDR2-800 Kingston HyperX memory modules. The motherboard used is an Intel D975XBX 'Bad Axe' together with a Seagate 7200.7 hard drive. The operating system used is Windows XP Professional, patched with Service Pack 2 and DirectX 9.0c.

We have attempted to collect all the major consumer discrete graphics chipsets of the past two generations, meaning besides the new DirectX 10 compatible ones like the Radeon HD and GeForce 8 series, we have included GeForce 7 and Radeon X1000 cards. However, there were instances when we couldn't get them in time for this article, hence there is the notable lack of the Radeon HD 2400 and 2600 PRO. We were also unable to get the Radeon HD 2900 XT back in our labs for retesting and so its scores were unavailable for some benchmarks.

For all cases, these cards are tested at their standard clock speeds and configurations and unless otherwise stated in the graphs, they are all equipped with GDDR3 memory. In some cases, we have had to include the passively cooled silent versions but these should only affect the temperature segment and will be duly noted in our charts.

The graphics drivers used are as follows:

• GeForce 7 series - ForceWare 93.71
• GeForce 8 series - ForceWare 158.19
• ATI Radeon X1000 series - Catalyst 7.2
• ATI Radeon HD 2000 series - Catalyst driver version 8.38

The following benchmarks were tested for all cards at resolutions of 1280 x 1024 and 1600 x 1200, with and without anti-aliasing and the maximum image quality settings were used for all:

• Futuremark 3DMark06 (ver. 102)
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (ver 1.3)
• F.E.A.R
• Quake 4 (ver 1.2)
• Company of Heroes (ver 1.3)
• Supreme Commander

Results - 3DMark06

NVIDIA's expensive GeForce 8800 Ultra led the way with a 3 to 7% advantage over the GeForce 8800 GTX in 3DMark06. Meanwhile, ATI's best performer, the Radeon HD 2900 XT managed to gatecrash the GeForce 8800 party, squeezing in ahead of the GeForce 8800 GTS contingent. Looking at the overall performance chart, there are quite a few distinct performance levels, with the GeForce 8800 Ultra, GTX and sometimes the Radeon HD 2900 XT taking the top niche, the GeForce 8800 GTS in a category of its own and then the older high-end GeForce 7 and Radeon X1950 cards jostling in the middle of the table with the newer mid-range GeForce 8 and Radeon HD cards. Of course, the GeForce 7 cards could not complete 3DMark06 with anti-aliasing and high-dynamic-range (HDR) enabled while the bottom was expectedly inhabited by the older GeForce 7 / Radeon X1000 series cards or 64-bit budget cards like the GeForce 8400 GS.

Results - Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

The high-end GeForce 8800 cards were simply too fast, though the Radeon HD 2900 XT was again sandwiched on its own between the GTX/Ultra and the GTS. The lesser GeForce 8800 GTS series found themselves competing with the GeForce 7950 GX2, which probably shows that a multi-GPU setup, even an older one, still has its place. Former top cards like the ATI Radeon X1950 XTX also fared decently here, though the 8800 GTS has replaced them. Since the benchmark uses HDR rendering, the GeForce 7 cards were, like in 3DMark06, left out once anti-aliasing was enabled. Going by our results, the game becomes quite unplayable for the lower end segment and any card below a GeForce 7600 GT falls into this category. Unless of course if you would rather settle for less than perfect graphics quality, then these lower end segment cards can still tide you along.

Results - F.E.A.R

The difference between the slowest and fastest graphics cards could not be more stark here, with the bottom Radeon X1300 PRO producing less than a tenth of the frame rates achieved by the GeForce 8800 Ultra. This was one game where buying the best made an enormous difference. Of course, the price difference between the two is probably also sufficient to buy a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360. ATI's fastest graphics card, the Radeon HD 2900 XT continued to exist in its own niche between the GeForce 8800 GTX and the GTS and this 'indirect' competition is reflected for most of the other scores; you'll find ATI and NVIDIA cards generally alternating in position as you move down the chart. Whether that is intentional or not, it means that there is likely a specific graphics card suited for a specific price range, though this naturally varies from one game to another.

Results - Quake 4

Like in many of our previous benchmarks, Quake 4 showed that the older cards still have what it takes to compete against the new generation. As prices plunge to the lowest for these cards, they can be very attractive, short-term solutions. The mid-range GeForce 8 and Radeon HD cards in particular, have not been very convincing and in Quake 4, we saw the Radeon HD 2600 XT losing out to the NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT while the NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT fared even worse. We also saw the GeForce 7950 GT and Radeon X1950 PRO outperforming the GeForce 8600 GTS. Meanwhile, some of the entry level cards were not much better than integrated graphics, registering single digit frame rates in Quake 4, which itself is not that demanding by current standards. Although these new cards do have the advantage of DirectX 10 support and dedicated video processors, going by these scores, we aren't sure if these are real advantages or only good on paper. That will of course be a story for another day, but in this article, it's all about raw gaming performance of existing games.

Results - Company of Heroes

Similar to F.E.A.R, there was a rather giant gap between the really high-end cards and the merely high-end. A reasonably powerful GeForce 8800 GTS was around 20 to more than 30 frames slower than the GeForce 8800 GTX. The other slower cards were mostly clustered together, with the ATI cards generally performing slightly better than its NVIDIA counterpart. The mid-range GeForce 7600 GT for example was equal to the newer GeForce 8600 GT here and both performed decently with more than 30 frames per second. There is a Company of Heroes patch available for DirectX 10 compatibility, though we recommend this only for the high-end graphics card, and not the GeForce 8500 GT class.

Results - Supreme Commander

A recent massive real time strategy game, Supreme Commander is on a different scale from the usual RTS game. This epic scale means that in many instances, there are many units on the map and hence, this game seriously taxes both the CPU and GPU, the former due to the AI requirements and the latter, the rendering necessary for such a large battlefield. Unsurprisingly, with the settings put to maximum, even the high-end cards found Supreme Commander rather challenging. We only tested the new cards for this benchmark, but from what we have seen, only the higher mid-range cards (GeForce 8600 GTS and faster) are able to handle this game adequately at our settings. The good news is that there was only a slight performance penalty for enabling anti-aliasing.

Temperature Testing & Power Consumption

The warmest GPUs of the bunch we tested turned out to be the older cards, namely the 2-in-1 GeForce 7950 GX2 and the Radeon X1950 XTX. Both registered temperatures of more than 70 degrees Celsius for their core temperature in our air-conditioned lab. Fortunately the newer GeForce 8800 GTX topped out at around 66 degrees while the faster Ultra did even better by shaving off a couple of degrees. ATI's top Radeon HD card also performed well here with its two-slot cooler and had the edge over both the GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS. Overall, most of the graphics cards fell in between the 40 - 60 degrees range and with decent case ventilation, most users should find the default cooling sufficient.

Power Consumption

Next up, we used a power meter at the wall socket to find out the total power draw of our system, which is quite average in terms of peripherals installed like hard drive, optical drive and nothing else fancy. Hence all the numbers shown in our graph, whether at idle or full load, is the total sum of all the devices in the system, of which the graphics card is only a part of. For our load test, we ran F.E.A.R without anti-aliasing at 1600 x 1200 and maximum settings.

As you can see, NVIDIA's high-end GeForce 8800 cards recorded the highest total power draw at full load and at idle, so for the energy conscious bunch, the GeForce 8800 cards may not be the ideal match. ATI's Radeon HD 2900 XT comes close at full load, though still around 50W less than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. At idle, it had commendably low power consumption at only 103W, placing it lower than the GeForce 8600 GTS for one. The high numbers for full load are the reason why power supplies are coming in ever more powerful wattages, not to mention that a multi-GPU SLI or CrossFire configuration will surely inflate these numbers.

Overall Performance & Value

Having seen how the cards perform and rank in the various benchmarks shown, which card is the top performer? Well, since the two generations of cards differ so much in terms of features, especially with the new GeForce 8 and Radeon HD 2000 series having DirectX 10 support and dedicated video processors (for the most part), we decided that it was only relevant to have such an overall performance ranking for the new cards, as these are the ones any new buyer will be looking at now.

Hence, this comparison table will not include the GeForce 7 or the Radeon X1000 series. Next, we had to choose from the benchmarks which ones to use for our ranking. In this case, we were forced by circumstances to eliminate some benchmarks; for example, we could not use Supreme Commander as we lacked scores for the Radeon HD 2900 XT for it. And finally, we had to select resolutions and settings for the scores and we chose 1280 x 1024 since that resolution is not beyond the low end cards and we also included scores with and without anti-aliasing enabled.

With that done, we used the slowest performing card, the GeForce 8400 GS as the base, represented as 1.00 in our chart and then proceeded to find out the percentage gain/loss over this base card. For example, a score of 10 in our chart would mean that this card is 10 times faster than the base (GeForce 8400 GS) on the average in the benchmarks we selected and at 1280 x 1024 resolution, with and without AA. From our scores, we derived the following table, listing the aggregate performance and then the chart that follows:

Now that we have seen how they rank from top to bottom, the next question any consumer would ask is which card gives the best value for money. To assess this, price has to come into the equation and to derive this, we took the prices from one of the most popular online electronics and computer stores, Newegg. The prices sampled are the lowest possible retail price for a standard version of the card, hence ruling out overclocked or passively cooled special editions. These are the boxed versions and not OEM or refurbished. In short, the prices are probably the lowest you can find for these graphics cards online at Newegg. While there could be cheaper alternatives elsewhere, we think that they are representative enough.

So which card is the best value for money? This is shown by the performance / price index below. As you can tell, initially it may seem wrong as some of the entry level cards scored rather high here. However, it does make sense since although these cards do provide good value, their value is limited to their niche category and they fail utterly in more demanding games and applications. (Not surprisingly, the extremely expensive GeForce 8800 Ultra is not really worth it.) Therefore, we recommend that you look at which card is the best value within its performance category and these segments are color-coded in our chart below.

Final Words

While our list of graphics cards in this article is not as comprehensive as we would have liked, the end results are useful from both the performance/enthusiast point of view and also for the average consumer. Enthusiasts would no doubt want the numbers to justify their expensive purchases while the typical consumer will want to get the most for their dollar. The GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB showed that all the talk about its value proposition are right on the mark as it gave the best value. Even though it's considered a high-end card, prices are not beyond most consumers too (at least it's cheaper than a brand new console, Wii excepted). Of course, you'll also have to factor in your exact performance needs by looking at the raw performance, and in this case, the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB edition doesn't fare well beyond a resolution of 1600x1200 due to a small frame buffer. It however does swell if you don't need very high resolution gaming. This is where the runner-up, the Radeon HD 2900 XT comes into play as it was not far behind in the GeForce 88800 GTS 320MB in the performance/price index, but delivered reasonably well for high resolution performance needs. Still trailing the raw performance leaders, this also justifies ATI's decision to price the Radeon HD 2900 XT competitively to make up for its shortfalls, which has worked to its advantage as highlighted in our index.

As for the mid-range segment, the GeForce 8600 GT outdid its more powerful cousin, the GTS in terms of value. For the entry level category, the GeForce 8500 GT emerged as the leader and with a lower price tag than the Radeon HD 2400 XT, it's no surprise. Yet another finding from this article is that we are lacking new products to address the wide performance discrepancy between the GeForce 8600 GTS and 8800 GTS segment. Currently, the older GeForce 7900 series and the Radeon X1950 series sit in between this lucrative space. More than a couple of months have passed since the complete DX10 lineup from both graphics giants debuted, but there has been nothing in sight to address this segment yet.

At this point of time, we hope this comparison article would be useful for some of you when making that tough purchasing decision, especially for cards that are closely matched. With more DirectX 10 games slated to launch before the end of the year, there may finally be the games to utilize the new hardware available today.

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