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Testing

The nVidia cards were tested on an Asus A8N32-SLI using an Athlon 64 FX60, 2GBs of CMX1024-3500LLPRO RAM and a Seagate Barracuda ST340083A8 hard disk. Power was supplied by a Tagan TG480-U01. For ATI testing, everything was kept the same except for the use of an Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe.

All of the nVidia cards were tested using the official 84.21 ForceWare drivers, except for the SLI/Reference card results which were tested using 84.17 ForceWare, which offers almost identical performance. ATI Cards were tested using Catalyst 6.3

Using our proprietary automated benchmarking suite, aptly dubbed “SpodeMark 3D”, I ran Call of Duty 2, Counter Strike: Source, Quake 4, Battlefield 2 and 3DMark 06. Bar 3DMark06, these all run using our in-house pre-recorded timedemos in the most intense sections of each game I could find. Each setting is run three times and the average is taken, for reproducible and accurate results. I ran each game test at 1,280 x 1,024, 1,600 x 1,200, 1,920 x 1,440 and 2,048 x 1,536 each at 0x FSAA with trilinear filtering, 2x FSAA with 4x AF and 4x FSAA with 8x AF.

We ran the X1600 XT at both “Turbo” and standard clock speeds, and we also included a 7600 GT in to the mix for comparison.

Results

3DMark06 usually tallies with the overall results we see in games, but in this case it couldn’t be more wrong, putting the X1600 XT a good 10 per cent ahead of the 7600 GS. Naturally the 7600 GS can’t support HDR and FSAA simultaneously, so there is very little comparison data anyway.

In Battlefield 2, at 1,280 x 1,024 (which is the resolution that really matters) the X1600 XT pulls away with a very slight lead, which is especially noticeable when FSAA and AF are switched on. At 1,600 x 1,200 and above though, the roles reverse with the 7600 GS taking a significant lead in places.

Call of Duty 2 is barely playable on either of these cards, but at 1,280 x 1,024 with no FSAA and AF the 7600 GS takes a lead significant enough to almost brand it playable with 27.39 frames per second. Anything above 1,280 x 1,024 ran at speeds a milk float would consider slow. Remember though that this is at maximum detail settings so you could get away with 1,280 x 1,024 if you lower the detail.

Counter-Strike: Source also showed an affinity towards nVidia hardware with a 10 per cent improvement over the X1600 XT. This bought CSS to 45.5 frames per second, which is a comfortable frame rate considering this is a tough level involving HDR. Even with 4x FSAA and 8x AF enabled, all three cards were playable at around 30 frames per second.

Quake 4 was very much skewed towards nVidia hardware too due to its superior OpenGL implementation and support for UltraShadow II. In places, there is much as 50 per cent speed difference.

Verdict

The HIS X1600 XT is a good example of an X1600 XT and we’d probably pay the extra to have the quieter cooler, but the extra £5 for the Turbo version could be better spent on, well, anything. It is available from overclockers.co.uk at £117.31 including VAT.

However, the 7600 GS is silent, takes only one slot, and is a better performer and should be mildly cheaper at £92.23 from scan.co.uk. So out of the two, we would recommend the Leadtek 7600 GS and that opinion sticks for other brands as well.

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