These Hot Graphics Got Game
The spotlight this months shines on powerhouse graphics boards--including new PCI Express models.
For the first time in years, 3D games have jumped ahead of the hardware that runs them--specifically, high-end graphics boards. You no longer have to worry that you'll spend $300 to $500 on the latest graphics board only to wait months before a game can challenge it. Games such as Doom 3 and Far Cry are here now. And they are challenging, to both you and your graphics board.
Here's another complication: Boards with the PCI Express interface have become available, with twice the bandwidth of the 8X AGP interface. This raises some questions: Is PCI Express required for top performance? Is it time to upgrade your computer along with your graphics?
Our Test Center put 17 boards--9 AGP and 8 PCI Express--through the rigors of cutting-edge game graphics. In addition to performance boards, we looked at 3 value-price boards with midrange chip sets from NVidia and ATI.
As we started this story, numerous questions came to mind: How many power leads will all these boards need to work in your system? Are the boards slot hogs? Can they tame the incredible computational demands of Doom 3? Plus, the question on every gamer's mind: Which graphics board outperforms the rest?
Gamers aren't the only group looking for answers. Multimedia fans want to know what video ports these boards offer. In addition, which companies provide the best hardware and software bundles?
The answers to these questions surprised us and offered insight into what's important when you're looking to upgrade.
Our test results suggest that there's no immediate reason to dump your AGP motherboard solely to boost graphics performance. Today's graphics boards do not fully take advantage of the 8X AGP bus, so the AGP-interface versions of high-end boards can give you their best. Gaming performance, measured in frames per second, is still mostly determined by your graphics card's speed and your PC's CPU.
On the other hand, a new PCI Express motherboard provides both greater potential performance and a hedge against obsolescence. Therefore, many people who need to replace their aging PCs will likely find it worthwhile to opt for a PCI Express graphics board/motherboard combination.
A note on the frame rates that we report in our chart: We cannot directly compare the frame rates of AGP boards with those of their PCI Express counterparts--even where the graphics chip set and memory specifications are the same. The reason for this is that we were unable to set up matching test beds with dual PCI Express and AGP support--the only scenario that would have allowed us to compare PCI Express and AGP test scores. At press time, no motherboards offered dual AGP/PCI Express support, and few are likely to do so in the near future. You'll find the specific configurations that we did use at the bottom of our chart.
In a very close race, and in a field of boards dominated by NVidia GeForce 6800 series and ATI Radeon X800 graphics processors, the top performer (if occasionally by a thin margin) in the AGP category was EVGA's E-GeForce 6800 Ultra. The only board we tested that came with NVidia's GeForce 6800 Ultra graphics processor, it produced the fastest frame rates in five of our seven gaming tests. This card, however, earned a number three ranking in the AGP portion of our chart for two reasons: a weak software bundle and a similarly limited support policy compared with the first- and second-ranked boards.
After the EVGA we saw a virtual tie in performance among five other cards from ATI, BFG Tech, MSI, PNY, and PowerColor--all using either ATI's Radeon X800 XT chip or NVidia's GeForce 6800 GT (which has a lower clock speed than the 6800 Ultra). The top-ranked MSI NX6800GT offers a stellar software bundle.
Performance results were even closer among the top four PCI Express boards. The one board in the PCI Express category that was powered by NVidia's GeForce 6800 GT--PNY's Verto 6800GT PCI Express--was our top performer, though by only a small margin. Frame rate differences among the next three--from Asus, ATI, and PowerColor, all using ATI's Radeon X800 XT--were minor.
Running games--especially complex ones like Doom 3 and Far Cry--at a high, 1600-by-1200-pixel resolution and turning on advanced graphics settings such as antialiasing and anisotropic filtering exacts a toll on frame rates. When it ran Doom 3, the EVGA E-GeForce 6800 Ultra, for example, dropped from an average of 60 frames per second at 1024-by-768 resolution to 49 fps at 1600 by 1200. Adding antialiasing at the higher resolution, dropped it down to a mere 32 fps. For the most part, the slower the board, the greater the frame rate loss.
Value Cards
If $400 to $500 is too steep a price to pay for better graphics, you'll get a fine value in EVGA's $250 E-GeForce 6600GT, which secured the number four slot and the Best Buy award on the PCI Express portion of our chart. The 6600GT has a slower core speed than the GeForce 6800 series and half the graphics DDR RAM of the 6800 GT boards, but you're paying, in some cases, just half as much.
When the EVGA E-GeForce 6600GT ran Doom 3, the board delivered a very respectable 55 fps at a resolution of 1024 by 768 with antialiasing turned off. Run the game at 1600 by 1200 with antialiasing switched on, and you hit the card's limitations--its 16-fps frame rate was about half that of the fastest boards.
Boards with ATI's value chips--Asus's Extreme AX 600XT, MSI's RX600XT-VTD128E, Sapphire's Radeon X700 Pro--did not earn places on the chart. They are too slow for truly entertaining play with games such as Doom 3 or Far Cry at higher resolutions. The Radeon X600 cards delivered an unplayable 5 fps when run at 1600-by-1200-pixel resolution with antialiasing turned on. The Radeon X700 card delivered 10 fps. Both boards, however, provide fine performance when running older, less-demanding games such as Unreal Tournament 2004. Both of the Radeon X600 cards delivered 65 fps at a 1024-by-768 resolution with antialiasing turned off. The Radeon X700 Pro delivered 67 fps at this resolution.
Aside from performance and price, these boards differ in the ports they offer. All have at least one DVI port and support for a 15-pin VGA connection and two displays. A few boards--the Asus Extreme AX800XT /2DT, the EVGA E-GeForce 6800 Ultra, and the PNY Verto 6800GT PCI Express--offer two DVI ports, so you can set up dual LCDs using the digital ports, which typically provide a better image than do analog ports. (All of the boards come with adapters that convert the DVI port into a 15-pin analog connection.) S-Video-out, for hook up to a TV, is common to all the models, and about half offer composite-out, as well. Most of the boards with ATI graphics also support S-Video-in, which is useful for capturing video into your PC, though in many cases you have to provide your own video-capture software. None of these cards come equipped with TV tuners.
Power, Heat, and NoiseAs graphics boards get more powerful, they draw more power; however, all of the boards--even the EVGA E-GeForce 6800 Ultra, whose box specified that a 450-watt power supply was required--ran flawlessly on our test beds, which were outfitted with 300-watt power supplies. NVidia says that it originally set the power specification for the 6800 Ultra chip to 480W in order to address the overclocking needs of gaming enthusiasts, who will get better performance out of a bigger power supply. NVidia has since lowered the official power spec to 350 watts.
Greater power also generates more heat. Graphics processors soak up nearly as much power as your machine's processor, so these boards pack a heat sink and fan combination that can become hot, noisy, and bulky. Though only one AGP card, the Sapphire Toxic Radeon X800 Pro, was so large as to cover up our test bed's adjacent PCI slot, we left that next slot empty for all the boards, to help cool air flow to the fan and heat sink. Nevertheless, the cartoonlike blue fan with an orange shroud on the Sapphire board was one of the quietest. By contrast, ATI's and PowerColor's Radeon X800XT boards emitted louder, high-pitched fan noises.
If you don't plan to play the latest 3D action games, you really don't need a Radeon X800- or GeForce 6800-based board. For the budget-minded, we recommend EVGA's $250 E-GeForce 6600GT. Another option is the $205 Sapphire Radeon X700 Pro. Though this card did not make our chart, it did outperform the ATI Radeon X600-based cards, and it kept up with the $499 ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition at low resolutions on older games. Both boards pounded out more than 100 fps in our Wolfenstein Enemy Territory test at 1024-by-768-pixel resolution with antialiasing turned off.
Still, Doom 3's cinematic graphics have set a new standard for hardware-taxing game play. A board that can handle this game today should be able to hang with the heavies for at least the year to come.
Upgrade Tips: Maximizing Performance- get the latest drivers straight from the chip manufacturer--and update them regularly. The newest drivers may slightly raise your frame rate on a video game.
- have at least a 2-GHz CPU, you're better off investing in a new processor before a new graphics board. A slow processor can't properly feed top-of-the-line GeForce 6800- and Radeon X800-based boards.
- not be to buy a new graphics board at all if you're playing a CPU-bound game. With these games, only more system processor power, not graphics power, can increase frame rates.
- supplemental power from the same type of connector used for internal hard drives. It's a lot easier to insert the power connector before you put the board in the AGP or PCI Express slot. We learned the hard way.
- of Doom 3 taxes even the most expensive graphics board. Don't become obsessed with running the game with settings maxed out. The game still looks amazing at 640-by-480 and 800-by-600 resolutions.
Patrick Norton
