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- Date:
- Monday , September 25, 2006
- Author:
- Mark Warner
- Editor:
- Brent Justice
- Google +1
VisionTek PCI RADEON X1300 256 MB
VisionTek’s PCI based RADEON X1300 256 MB graphics card is a unique product that fills a unique niche. Does this PCI graphics card stack up to the PCI-Express competition? What potentials does it hold beyond 3D gaming?
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
(DirectX 9)
Oblivion is the next Elder Scrolls game and the unconnected sequel to Morrowind. It uses the multi-platform Gamebryo game engine. Oblivion features DirectX 9 shaders and Havok physics. The engine supports lush vegetation, soft shadows, and high dynamic range lighting (HDR). Oblivion also features SpeedTree for rendering trees.
For testing, we have chosen to do a manual run-through riding horseback from outside the Imperial City to Chorrol to Bruma. This run-through allows us to push the hardware as much as the game can. While this is an outdoor run-through, we do make sure to test indoor situations in our gameplay analysis as well. We have found that turning on the torch indoors with HDR lighting takes a big hit on performance in some situations. We make sure to test this scenario, and the posted configuration screenshots reflect the results of testing both indoor and outdoor scenarios.
Evaluating Gameplay in Oblivion
Oblivion can be considered generally unplayable on the VisionTek Radeon X1300 PCI video card. Even with a very low-quality configuration, framerates are consistently very low, frequently dipping below the playability threshhold of 30 frames per second. To improve framerates, we could have lowered the configuration even more, but the game looks pretty barren as it is at these low settings., and the resulting performance lowering the settings even more was not enough of an improvement to justify destroying the already meager image quality. As you can see we had to set the resolution to a dismal 640x480 resolution with no AA and no AF. We have all the fade options near the bottom, every shadow option off, no specular highlighting, no HDR, no Bloom, no Grass, all distant objects off, water quality turned downed to very low and view distance lowered quite a bit. Yet the framerates were still very erratic.
The situation with the lower priced NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GS PCI-Express video card was just slightly better. We had to run at the same dismal 640x480 resolution with no AA and no AF, but we were able to run with some higher in-game settings. Most notably we were able to have the view distance to maximum which meant we could see all of the world on the screen making the game look much bigger in scope. We were also able to have some of the fade options up higher with specular distance. We did however have to turn off all shadows and turn down water quality as well as all distant objects.
Moving to the equally priced (and outclassed) GeForce 7600 GS produces a much higher level of gameplay experience in Oblivion. Notably we were able to run the game at a higher 1024x768 resolution which is much better compared to 640x480 which has horrible aliasing. We were also able to have medium fade and maximum view distance with maximum distant objects.
Image Quality
In the first and second screenshots, you can see the difference in visibility between the VisionTek Radeon X1300 PCI and the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GS. The GeForce 7300 GS allows you to see much further, but the resolution is the same and the GeForce 7300 GS is clearly outperforming the X1300 PCI, even with more detail showing.
The third screenshot is from the NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS, and was taken at exactly the same place as the second screenshot. The difference is clear. Resolution, detail, image quality, and viewing distance are greatly exaggerated over the other two video cards.