AGP Platform Analysis, Part 2: New Cards, Single-Core System
Star Trek: Legacy
Now let's examine the results with the Star Trek: Legacy engine, a relatively new title with some very impressive visuals:
At low settings the game is completely limited by the system, even on the 3400+. With the resolution set to 1280x1024 with 2xAA however, things begin to change:
The X1950 PROs have essentially the same results as they did at low resolution and detail, showing that the CPU is still capping the maximum frame rates. The Geforces are slower compared to the X1950 PROs, which was not the case on the older AthlonXP 2500+ system:
On the 2500+, the performance was definitely bottlenecked by the CPU.
Will the performance of the X1950 PROs on the Athlon64 3400+ platform stay high if resolution is increased to 1600x1200 with 4x anti-aliasing?
The answer is a definite "kind of." The performance slips a bit on the X1950 PRO cards compared to the lower resolution, but the results are very similar and the game remains very playable. The Geforces are taxed at these settings and are rendered unplayable.
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Don Woligroski was a former senior hardware editor for Tom's Hardware. He has covered a wide range of PC hardware topics, including CPUs, GPUs, system building, and emerging technologies.