AquaMark3, X² - The Threat
Aquamark3- Author: Massive
- DirectX Class: 9.0
- Pixel and Vertex Shaders: Yes (mixed mode, PS1.4 and PS2.0)
We spoke of the beefed-up vertex shading available on the FX 5700 iteration of GPUs. That's in prime evidence here as it displaces the FX 5600 Ultra again. DirectX 9 benchmarks haven't looked favourably on NVIDIA's GPUs, and it's of no surprise to see the otherwise comparable Radeon 9600XT take a decisive lead. Take older benchmarks - Quake III would show the Leadtek card in a much better light but that would just leave the DX9 part of the card untapped. We'll just gloss over the fact that Q3 is an OGL benchmark :).
X² - The Threat
- Author: Egosoft
- DirectX Class: 9.0
- Pixel and Vertex Shaders: Yes (unknown versions or amount of effects)
The cards bunch together in X². The 52.16s still exhibit a kind of locking and releasing behaviour. The benchmark appears to freeze in parts. The sweetspots for these cards appears to be 1024x768 with image enhancement applied. Exactly the kind of scenarios both ATI and NVIDIA expected them to excel in. It's good to see such close bunching from all concerned.
