Ultimate X1600 vs GF7600 thread!! REAL LIFE GAME BENCHES!!

Welcome

Since Ati's X1600 and nVidia's GeForce 7600 appeared in notebook computers on NBR gaming forum we've had flood of threads like : „Which card is faster : X1600 or GF7600?” or „I don't know what to choose, X1600 or GF7600, help I'm noob” or „Is REALLY X1600 faster than GF7600?”. Every single day we have new topics about the SAME matter. And I'm sick and tired of reading this. So I decided to bring you...

***ULTIMATE X1600 vs GF7600 comparison***​

You won't find here 3dmarks or another crap, only real-world game benchmarks. This scores are 100% sure, 100% no bull...it – as real as it gets. So please, read this topic, take a look at the scores and stop posting another thread about it!!

Let's begin, shall we?
In this test we ( kudos to „zydus” for tremendous help!!) used two Asus laptops :

ATI : Asus W3j with Core Duo 1,86GHz + 1GB DDR2-667 + X1600 256MB (512 Hypermemory)

nVidia : Asus A8jm with Core Duo 1,86GHz + 1GB DDR2-667 + GF7600 512MB

As you can see the only diffrence is GPU. Both laptops with WXGA screens.
Games that we used in tests are first person shooters cause this type of games are most hardware demanding, I think we all agree in this matter. So we have :

F.E.A.R ( F.E.A.R engine)
Prey (Doom 3 engine)
Far Cry (Cry engine)
Half Life 2 (Source engine)
Aquamark (it's syntethic benchmark but it's using game engine so I think it suits as well)

All games with newest patches. System and graphics @ stock settings (X1600 @ 450/450 & GF7600 @ 450/450). Drivers we used are newest Catalyst 6.8 for Ati and for nVidia Xtreme G MobileForce 91.37.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *​

F.E.A.R (F.E.A.R , Condemned:Criminal Origins)​

Settings as follows : all to maximum + soft shadows OFF, 1024x768.

No AA + No AF

X1600 : 47 fps
GF7600 : 53 fps

AA x4 + AF x4

X1600 : 30 fps
GF7600 : 32 fps

And the winner is : Tie. 7600 has slightly more raw power in F.E.A.R., but with AA and AF both cards are on the exactly same level. With OC and we can expect 35-38 fps.

PREY (Doom 3, Quake 4, Prey)​

Settings as follows : all to maximum or ON, texture details set to highest, shader details set to high, 1280x768.

No AA + No AF

X1600 : 32,5 fps
GF7600 : 38 fps

AA x4 + AF x4

X1600 : 25,4 fps
GF7600 : 24.2 fps

And the winner is : Tie. While it is true that GF again has more „raw power” (has more fps without AA or AF) after turning on some AA and AF it's Radeon which takes the lead marginally. After little OC we should get average 30 fps so it's totally playable.

FarCry (FarCry)​

Settings as follow : ultra quality, pixel shader 3.0, 1024x768 (we've had some problems with widescreen mode)

No AA + No AF

X1600 : 63,32 fps
GF7600 : 51,98 fps

AA x8 + AF x16

X1600 : 39,14 fps
GF7600 : 38.69 fps

And the winner is : Tie again. In this case X1600 shows more raw power, but with AA & AF set to maximum both cards have almost the same framerates. You don't need to OC.

Aquamark (syntethic benchmark which uses game engine)​

Settings as follow : default (No AA + AF x4 + maximum details, 1024x768)

X1600 : 45315 marks
GF7600 : 63000 marks

And the winner is : GF7600 by a long shot!! To be honest I have no idea why the diffrence is so big. Still it's only a synthethic benchmark though.

With Source engine we had some problems, don't know what is it but something is not right. In our tests GF7600 without AA and AF had similar score to X1600 and that's ok. But with AA x8 + AF x16 + HDR GF's score was almost the same, 2-3 frames less. As you know that's 99,99% impossible. AntiAliasing, Anizo Filtering and HDR have great influence on GPU performance. Besides „Source” is ATI-optimised engine so almost same GF's scores in both tests means some kind of anomaly. So we ask you to do us a favour. If someone has Half-Life 2 or Half-Life 2: Lost Coast please send me a message and I will explain you how to do benchmarks. I know what score to expect, I just need a prove of that. With reasonable scores I will fill the gaps in HL2 and HL2:LC charts. Any help will be appreciate. ​

Half-Life 2 (Sin Episodes, Half-Life 2, CS: Source)​

Settings as follows : all to maximum, reflects all, 1280x768

No AA + No AF

X1600 : 72 fps
GF7600 : 68,4 fps

AA x8 + AF x16

X1600 : 42 fps
GF7600 :

And the winner is :

Half-Life 2 with HDR (HL2:Episode One, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic)​

„High Dynamic Range” is effect which will appear more often in new games, very graphics demanding

Settings as follows : all to maximum, reflects all, 1280x768 (remember that in HDR games X1600 will provide better picture quality)

No AA + No AF + HDR (full)

X1600 : 72,3 fps
GF7600 : 72,1

AA x8 + AF x16 + HDR (full)

X1600 : 42,2 fps
GF7600 :

And the winner is :


And that's it. I hope this will end all X1600 vs GF7600 wars. Diffrence in performance between Ati and nVidia are totally insignificant, results depends on titles we play : in one X1600 will be a bit faster in other 7600 will be on top, but again : diffrence will be UNNOTICEABLE!! Also 512MB dedicated in GF7600 (vs. 256MB in X1600) doesn't seem to give it some extra power. I think we can say that cards are absolutely equal and only money/personal preferences/laptop brand should decide which card we should take!! So all you ATI and nVidia fanboys – STFU!!

Chaz, please make this thread sticky, for all these poor noobs.

The end.

 

Congratulations on your first stick mastha. I switched out the 3DMark05 scores to make room for it.

 

Great post! Thanks for putting this up as this topic comes up very often. I really appreciate the work you put in to show what many have been saying forever--the two cards are essentially similar in power. And since it is stickied, perhaps the question will not come up as often in the future.

 

Good job! I would post those Source numbers anyway.

 

@ lewdvig : you know these scores was too weird to put them here, zydus have the same framerate in every single test with Source and Source HDR. It just doesn't made sens. If others will provide similar (for me:almost impossible) scores I will upload them.

 

Ok a few things to note:

in my benchmarks, Yes my ASUS VS my desktop.

Desktop specs: 4.6GHz (OC)Celeron D, 1GB 533 ram,PCIe GF 7600GT.

notebook specs: 2GHz T2500, 2GB 667 ram, X1600.

It seems like the desktop PCIe 7600GT would win but thats only half true.

In my FEAR, HL2 lost coast, PREY, and DOOM3 tests, I concluded that the 7600GT ran only slightly better, in most cases by about 2-3 FPS.

When I turned on AA to the max, the X1600 killed the 7600GT, by an average of 12FPS.
I used 1024x768 for all tests.
Drivers:
FW v91.31
Cat mobile 6.8

For some reason my notebook's X1600 is also Extremely faster than my other desktop with an X1600PRO 512mb PCIe /w AMD sempron. I have done numerous tests and my notebook version always wins. why is this?

I'm thinking that these tests were unfair due to the fact that my laptop has faster ram, and a core duo.

 

great post mastha! Hopefully this will quell all the ATI vs nVidia arguments, because really it depends on the game, no company is outright better than the other.

 

It was pretty well-known that id engines favor nVidia and that Source runs best on ATi (since that's how it was coded to begin with), but it's nice to see it proven. Also good to see how little the overall difference can be.

[slightly OT]
GameSpot ran a similar, interesting comparison between high-end desktop cards, specifically 7900GTX and X1950XTX. Even then, and despite the GS editors' conclusions, performance would not be strikingly different if it weren't for the fact that the ATi card can run AA+HDR at the same time.
[/slightly OT]

Good job, mastha!

C.

 

Good Post!

 

About the GF Source numbers:
You can't use both HDR and AA on NVidia cards. I don't know which one of the two it disables (or maybe both?) if you try to force both features on.
Try testing with only AA but no HDR, or vice versa.

Also, keep in mind that while Source may originally have been "ATI optimized", that was in the Radeon 9xxx vs Geforce FX generation. Modern cards on both sides have changed a lot (as have the drivers), so those optimizations may no longer favor ATI at all.

 

Good comparison - however you might want to state that the actual clock speed of the go7600 and the x1600, differs from notebook to notebook.

The chip in the zepto 6214W seems to have been clocked slightly higher than the average go 7600 - which also seems to be the case with the x1600s...

 

@ Jalf : Actually you're right that GF can't use HDR with AA (and we knew that) at the same time, but in Source engine it's not "typical" HDR, in fact you can use HDR+AA even with GF. Don't ask me about details but it's true. "True" HDR is in Oblivion for example.

@ NOS-XRi : as you noticed "average" 7600 has 450/450 so I guess it's most common clocks.

 

Source doesn't do 'real' HDR - it's impossible to do that without Shader Model 3.0.

See here:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/lostcoast.ars/3

 

Very interesting reading, thanks Chaz.

C.

 

This is true, my X1600 stock clock is 475/475, but well it's just 6-7% difference

 

what is hdr plz tell me and how cane i see fps in fear PREY (Doom 3, Quake 4, Prey)
plz tell me

 

If you read page 4 of the link Chaz posted above there are comparison pics without HDR enabled and HDR enabled

In fact the whole article explains it quite clearly

To view framerate, http://www.fraps.com/download.php

 

If i put AA on in hl2 or hl2:episode one i almost see no smooth lines at all. I think thats the reason why hl2 won't run harder with AA on with the 7600 card. With my ati radeon 9800xt card hl2 does look smooth but with my geforce 7900gtx it doesn't. When i put AA on in windows the game looks a lot better and is just as smooth as it has to be (with 7900gtx).

 

By "when I put AA on in windows" you mean that you run the game in windowed mode or that you force AA use in all applications from the nVidia control panel from Windows?

C.

 

ofcourse i mean i force AA in all applications from the nVidia control panle windows.

 

I can't get AA when HDR is enabled in Source. As PC_Pulsar said, it just doesn't seem to smooth anything, so my guess is that on NVidia cards, it ignores the AA setting when HDR is on. Without HDR, AA works as expected, and smooths everything nicely.

About whether or not it's "true" HDR, that depends on your definitions. It's certainly implemented slightly different from "conventional" HDR (It doesn't use SM3.0, for example), but as far as I know, it's still HDR, at least when you look at what it *does*. In some respects it is a bit simpler than that of Oblivion, for example, but it still performs the operations that make up HDR.

Unfortunately, I don't know exactly what the problem is with HDR+AA on NVidia cards, so I can't say for sure whether it's a problem in Source. But it does *look* like AA is ignored when HDR is on.

 

Thank You Thank You Thank You

I have been waiting for something like this to clear the air. It has been said many times; yet the question still arises "which is better?". Glad to see someone with the resources to put this one to pasture.

 

I think slightly better is X1600 but only because it can use HDR and AA and the same time. Framerates are the same in both cases so I think this is only advantage of X1600 over GF.

 

I think thats a really bad reason to say the X1600 is better. The X1600 isn't made to use HDR and AA at the same time because the card isn't powerfull enough for ALL those kind of games (except the 'fake' hdr of HL2).

 

U can also turn on "true" HDR in Far Cry. But like I said : framerates are the same so if X1600 has opportunity to display both AA and HDR so this IS advantage and X1600 IS better option (slightly but still)

 

I ran Counter-Strike: Source today on a GeForce Go7600-equipped machine, and I played de_dust. HDR can indeed be enabled with AA turned on. I ran it at 1280x800 with full HDR, 8X AF, 2X AA quite smoothly.

 

And it was properly antialiased? Interesting. Did you try benchmarking the performance difference with and without AA then?

 

I'll benchmark de_dust with and without AA, and let you know what the frames are when I play later.

Here's an article on ExtremeTech that explains why HDR + AA can be used on all DX9 cards (at the top):
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1979441,00.asp

 

Thank you for this excellent article, well worth being sticked.

You still haven't answered the most important question though... Who would win in a fist-fight? The X1600, go7600 or Chuck Norris?

 

"Catalyst 6.8 for Ati and for nVidia Xtreme G MobileForce 91.37."

So are these optimized drivers for NVidia?

 

I think it's Sister Mary Catherine coming in from behind with the ruler that'd lay the smack down on all of them, TedJ
And Hyperluminous: Thye're drivers for NVIDIA at least. The MobileForce 91.37's that is. The Catalyst 6.8's are for ATI cards. Where are you seeing that?

 

Hi,

Im confused on the x1600 drivers?

Which is better, the Catalyst driver or the Omega drivers?

 

The rule is : Omega's are slightly better. But Catalyst 6.8 are really good. IMO Omega 6.8 will be a killer

EDIT.
Ok, csinth has some problems with HL2 benchmarks, his GF7600 doesn't want to cooperate so again I'm asking for some help. If you have T2400+GF7600 256MB+1GB DDR2-667 and also have HL2 & HL2:Lost Coast please send me a PM, your help will be appreciate.

On newest drivers Chuck is unbeatable (from tests on AnandTech)

 

Great post mastha. What's this x1700 comming soon on the asus I heard about somewhere? Anyone know about it?

 

AFAIK X1700 is only a rumour. But even if "better X1600" will be released I don't think there will be much power increase, I would say 500-700 marks more in 3dm05 @ stock at best.

 

I added some scores from HL2 and HL2:LC. Now we only need results for GF7600 with AA and AF enabled.

 

Good review, I do think its worth mentioning that noobs shouldnt mistake the Go7600GT256 for the cards in this review.

 

I have a Go7600 and both of those games, although you probably don't want my results (different specs). I was unable to set 8X AA - it only allowed up to 4X for me.

 

And what was your config? I can change x8 to x4, it's not a problem

 

Chaz in windows you can put 8x AA on!

 

It is:
-Go7600 256MB (450 core: 350 mem)
-Intel Core 2 Duo T7600 2.33GHz
-2GB DDR2-667
-100GB 7200RPM
Seems quite a bit higher than what you wanted.

I'll force 8X AA in Windows and try it, thanks.

 

Oke good luck!

 

is there an Nvidia equivalent to ATITool to monitor and tweak GPU settings?

 

RivaTuner. You can get it at www.guru3d.com

 

Very, very interesting - and timely for me, as I am deciding between laptops using these two cards. THANKS.

A question - regarding drivers, stability, and other facets of either manufacturer besides framerates, which is better? I value stability a lot, as I plan on doing only ocassional gaming and its going to be mostly a work machine. So... I hear some bad things about ATI drivers. How true is this?

Thanks again!

Juan Miguel Venturello

 

Used to be true that ATI drivers were never the most stable, but its not true anymore. I've had Nvidia and ATI cards and they are just as stable as one another really. They have their advantages and disadvantages, but stability is not something you should worry about these days.

 

Hey Mastha... great job man !

 

Waiting for X1700 (W2P) vs NV7700 (A8Js) tests

 

Finally, someone is testing these cards in an actual gaming environment. Can anyone test (or if not, speculate, at least) what kind of difference in frames-per-second you would see between either of the machines tested here, both of which are clocked at 450/450, versus the Compal HGL30, which is clocked at 350/350?

Thanks much,
Eric

 

I think you must search for scores of MacBook Pro. X1600 there has 350/350 I think. Performance is much closer to X700 than typicall X1600. But I may be wrong.