Performance
With the 5.5% increase in GPU clock, paired with a miserly 1% jump in memory frequency, the XFX XXX Edition should offer up a small but useful increase in performance compared to the reference hardware, on paper at least. Let's see if that's the case.Call of Duty 2
Our CoD2 test is a FRAPS run-through on the tankhunt level. The gameplay takes place during a large firefight in the snow, as the Soviets try and repair a communications cable under heavy attack from the opposing force.
Compared to the reference hardware, the XFX version is slightly faster at all times, and even slightly more than its clock increases should reasonably allow at 1280x1024 and 1600x1200. At 1920x1200, where the NVIDIA reference example couldn't fend off the Radeon X1800 XT, the XFX XXX Edition is usefully ahead. With CoD2 a really tough test for even these boards, with in-game details up near maximum, every bit of performance counts.
F.E.A.R.
The F.E.A.R. single player demo was a big win for Radeon X1800 XT hardware in our run-through, on release. The full release of the game promised to be something different, NVIDIA claiming their hardware did much better in that version. Our run-through switches sections (to an easier one for the HEXUS reviewer, but barely less taxing on the hardware) to an encounter with a few clones.
The XFX XXX Edition gains slightly, as expected, given the clocks. The GTX 512 boards are much faster than the Radeon X1800 XT at high resolutions.
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is a sneak-em-up that's been a very popular cross platform title for some time now. We use our own benchmarking scripts here, created by Team HEXUS to make it easy to gather SC:CT performance data.
Again, minor increases due to clock scaling, the 580MHz XFX version not offering much performance boost compared to the reference clocked board.
