GeForce 7900 GT head-to-head

Call of Duty 2:

Publisher: Activision

We used the full version of Call of Duty 2, patched to version 1.2. The game makes use of some awesome effects and is generally very graphically intense and immersive. That's helped by the tremendous smoke effect that Infinity Ward have created - it's better than anything we've ever seen before. There are also real time shadows and a subtle HDR lighting effect too.

The gameplay is not as linear as the first version of Call of Duty, and Infinity Ward has ditched the rather old Quake 3 engine in favour of creating its own proprietry graphics engine to render the effects. There is something about the game that makes it very intense and you often find yourself having to take a break from the action because you're too overwhelmed by its immersiveness and intensity.

We used a four minute portion of the first level in The Battle of El Alamein, starting the clock from the beginning of the battle, completing the missions in the same order, stopping the frame rate recording when we had played four minutes of the level. We ran this three times to check that our results were consistent.

The Optimise for SLI option was enabled, as it provides a frame rate boost for all video cards - all other options were set to their maximum values. Finally, we tested the cards at three resolutions with varying anti-aliasing settings to compare the cards in an apples to apples format.

At 1280x1024 4xAA 8xAF, there was a distinct pattern already in place with incremental changes in performance. The XFX 7900 GT XXX Edition was able to play the game really well at these settings, while the BFG Tech 7900 GT OC was also reasonably playable too. The GeForce 7800 GT OC was not quite smooth enough to consider it 100% playable, but many will be satisfied with these frame rates. It would be better suited to running at 1280x1024 with 2xAA 8xAF and maximum details, but some may find that they get more benefits from leaving 4xAA applied and lowering the other in-game details.

At 1600x1200 2xAA 8xAF, the two 7900 GTs bunched closer together, but the XFX still held a reasonable frame rate advantage - enough to notice the difference between the two. Both were reasonably playable, but we would prefer to lower some of the in-game details to improve the frame rates a little more. The 7800 GT OC didn't perform particularly well at these settings, and it's not really playable - the in-game details need lowering along with the antialiasing detail, too.

Only the XFX card remained 100% playable and smooth at 1920x1200 with 0xAA 8xAF and maximum details. There were noticeable hitches on both the BFG Tech 7900 GT OC and even more so on the 7800 GT OC. To improve things on the BFG Tech 7900 GT OC, we found that it was best to lower the texture details to 'Normal' and reduce the number of corpses from 'Insane' to 'Large'. On the 7800 GT OC, you'll also have to reduce smoke detail and the number of dynamic lights, too.