Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory uses a highly modified Unreal Engine 2 to do the bit you'd do with crayons. Initially shipped with Shader Model 1.1 and Shader Model 3.0 renderers, ATI have recently done the leg work for a Shader Model 2.0 patch for the game, bringing all the SM3.0-exclusive rendering features to mass-market graphics hardware, high-dynamic-range rendering and a tone-mapping pass included. We tested using the SM1.1 renderer, the only one common to all the tested hardware without fiddling around.No IQ
The engine is fairly shader-rate bound, especially in the pixel hardware. 7800 GTX is able to pull away convincingly, especially at the high end where it enjoys a 25% performance difference over the reference clocked GT. XFX's clocks bring the difference down to less than 15%. The X850 XT PE, with its high clocks, keeps pace with the one-pixel-quad-more GT.
4x AA, 8x AF
Turn on the eye candy and the X850 XT PE matches the GT blow for blow. The GTX outruns the lot by a fair margin. XFX's clocks give rise to an 8% performance improvement at the highest settings. 1024x768 is the sweet spot for the tested boards with anti-aliasing on in the stealth-em-up.
