ATI X1950 XTX works well in DirectX under Vista

WE PREVIOUSLY tested an Nvidia card under Vista RC2 and now its ATI's turn. You can check our test of Nvidia's driver here.

This time around, we used a GDDR 4 Radeon X1950XTX and installed ATI Catalyst drivers for Vista.

We tested everything on Vista RC2 build 5744, again at 32-bit to get a valid comparison.

Install of first Catalyst

Install of second, newer Catalyst

Some features are missing. The 3D preview is disabled but it will be ready before Microsoft ships Vista. The Vista Catalyst Control Centre still needs from six to seven seconds to boot up, but compared to ten to fifteen on Windows XP it is much faster.

OpenGL missing in action

We learned that even the fancy things such as overdrive work on the card. But ATI still doesn't have its Open GL driver ready so it uses Microsoft's one. This means horrible performance, as you'll see.

Overdrive overclocking in Vista

Benchmarketing
We used :
Foxconn C51XE M2aa Nforce 590 SLI motherboard
Geforce 7900 GT 450/1320 MHz
Athlon FX 62 2800 MHz 90 nanometre Windsor core
2x1024 MB DDR2 Corsair CM2X1024-6400C3 memory
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 400GB SATA NCQ hard drive
Thermaltake Mini Typhoon Athlon 64/X2/FX cooler and Intel CPU's
Silverstone Strider ST60F, 600W ATX 2.0 SATA

Doom 3	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Win XP	135.1	128.8	114.2
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista	35.3	34.5	33.2
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista new driver	36.2	34.6	33.9
?	?	?	?	?
Doom 3 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Win XP	121.6	99.1	75.9
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista	35.1	32.8	30.5
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista new driver	36.0	33.6	31.0
?	?	?	?	?
Quake 4	OK 1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Win XP	149.1	144.5	137.6
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista	50.7	49.1	48.0
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista new driver	52.0	50.0	49.1
?	?	?	?	?
Quake 4 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Win XP	141.7	134.4	122.4
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista	50.6	47.9	45.2
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista new driver	50.6	49.0	47.4
?	?	?	?	?
FEAR	OK 1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200	1920/1440- 2048x1536
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Win XP	137	108	85	56
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista	125	84	57	42
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista new driver	135	106	82	56
?	?	?	?	?
FEAR High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 16X	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200	1920/1440- 2048x1536
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Win XP	105	79	57	36
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista	78	50	34	25
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista new driver	104	79	56	37
?	?	?	?	?
Serious Sam	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	1920/1440-2048x1536
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Win XP	156.75	154.04	142.93	109.02
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista	77.29	76.00	74.73	68.36
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista new driver	84.70	80.96	76.46	66.70
?	?	?	?	?
Serious Sam High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 16X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	1920/1440- 2048x1536
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Win XP	140.51	120.23	99.14	70.94
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista	73.66	71.20	61.23	48.20
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista new driver	77.30	72.20	62.16	44.80
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	3DMark 03	Game2	Game3	Game3
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Win XP	19656	159.2	116.7	126.1
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista	18003	147.6	112.2	108.6
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista new driver	19298	159.5	118.8	120.9
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Vertex Shader	Pixel Shader 2.0
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Win XP	5346.0	10005.9	67.7	219.7
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista	4074.0	9967.7	60.5	185.6
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista new driver	5333.6	9962.7	65.9	184.6
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 06	3DMark 06	?	?
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Win XP	6283	?	?	?
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista	5962	?	?	?
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista new driver	6144	?	?	?
?	?	?	?	?
SM2.0 Test	Score	GT1	GT2
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Win XP	2457	19.281	21.669
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista	2372	19.102	21.592
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista new driver	2455	19.294	21.625
?	?	?	?	?
HDR/SM3.0 Test	Score	HDR1	HDR2
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Win XP	2722	26.317	28.118
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista	2589	25.520	27.120
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista new driver	2658	25.645	27.521
?	?	?	?	?
CPU Test	Score	CPU1	CPU2
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Win XP	2153	0.679	1.093
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista	1958	0.638	0.978
ATI X1950XTX 650/2000 MHz Vista new driver	2015	0.642	1.011

Before we finished up testing we spoke with ATI about the horrible driver performance in Doom 3 and Quake 4. You'll see that in best case scenario you'll get up to 35 frames in Doom 3 or up to 52 frames in Quake 4. Just for comparison, the Nvidia driver we tested scores 120 FPS in Doom 3 10x7 or 144.5 FPS in Quake 4. ATI told us that the Open GL driver is not ready and that the one that runs on Doom and Quake is Microsoft's, but still. Nvidia is 331 per cent faster in Doom 3 and 278 per cent faster in Quake 4. This is the biggest difference ever. However, we know that ATI will make things better but not yet. The new driver that we tested is WHQL and scores really close to Windows XP one.

Anti Aliasing settings under Vista

So ATI's XP Catalyst slaughters Vista performance and so does Nvidia's slower and cheaper Albatron 7950 GT card. Full stop.

Fear changes the bad omen. A new performance driver runs slightly slower that under XP. It is two to three frames slower and at 20x15 it is matched with the XP driver performance. We are talking about zero to three percent performance difference. Good job ATI.

FEAR with 4X FSAA and 8X Aniso is tight at 12x9 a single frame slower at 10x7 and 16x12 and it is a frame faster at 20x15. We didn't see this coming and you can see how much ATI improved between the first driver and WHQL beta that we got. P> Again disappointment as Serious Sam 2 works twice slower than on XP. We believe that this is DirectX rendering but we might be wrong as the scores looks like it is OpenGL. Nvidia even runs faster Serious Sam 2 than under XP and ATI is roughly twice slower, up to 100 percent slower to be precise.

3Dmark03 is just 300 marks slower than under XP and as 3Dmark05 was not working we tested 3Dmark06 and scored just 139 marks slower only two percent slower than under Vista.

In Short
One thing is clear. ATI's Open GL performance sucks. We can blame it on Microsoft but ATI still didn't implement its own Open GL rendered. Nvidia did, it works well compared with XP performance but it is still slower.

ATI shows promising performance in FEAR and you can see that ATI increased the performance in FEAR and the marks. I can also confirm that ATI works well in Half Life 2 Episode one, Counter Strike source and Half Life 2 but we didn't do any benchmarks.

The driver is good for Direct3D games but not for OpenGL. You will have to wait for this one. It looks like we will again spend a night testing Nvidia latest driver to see is there a performance increase in the new one. ?

Reviewed and tested by Sanjin Rados and Fuad Abazovic