Radeon X1600 Pro: Prolonging the Graphics Life of Your AGP Machine

Oblivion

For The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, we chose two game environments, one indoor and one outdoor, starting with default settings then adding Distant Landscape and 4xAA.

While the indoor environment was playable at a reasonable 1280x1024 using the Viper X1600 Pro AGP, the outdoor environment slaughtered both cards. Enough said.

Black & White 2

Black & White 2 offers various detail settings that sound unspecific, but serve specific functions, such as the AA options "off, medium, high". To find the highest frame rate at each resolution we started with its low-detail setting, then followed up with its high-detail setting and finished by adding AA-High from its custom menu.

The older card beats the upgrade, but how could this be? Default settings for Black and White 2 use Pixel Shader 3.0 for the X1600 series and 2.0 for the 9600 series, with the 9600 series rendering significantly less detail in the game introduction from which this test was derived.