NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2

Battlefield 2

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Battlefield 2 features an all-new game engine based on the DirectX 9.0 API. There is no Shader Model 3.0 support, but the majority of hardware will use a Shader Model 2.0++ mode that includes support for Normal Maps, Parallax Mapping, Full-Resolution Dynamic Shadowing, Post Processing and Fog.

The game will look the same on both NVIDIA and ATI hardware, so there is no advantage of choosing one over the other in image quality related circumstances. The only major difference is that Ultra Shadow 2 is utilised on NVIDIA's hardware, while the shadowing on ATI hardware is done using a slightly different technique.

We patched the game to version 1.22 and then played three five-minute segments of the 'Strike at Karkand' map, reporting the median frame rate. We found that there was no ready way to duplicate testing situations manually in this game, so we felt that taking a typical slice of action from the game was the best way to report our findings. We controlled Anti Aliasing from inside the game, while Anisotropic Filtering was set to 8xAF when the 'Texture Filtering' option was set to 'High'.

CRT Gaming:

At 1600x1200 the NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 was again impressive, as we were able to enjoy completely smooth gameplay with 8xS AA with transparency supersampling, 8xAF and maximum in game details enabled. At these rather crazy settings, we were able to maintain a frame rate that stayed well above 35 frames per second during our three five minute gameplay stints on the Strike at Karkand map.

The BFG Tech GeForce 7900 GT OC SLI was a little slower than the BFG Tech GeForce 7900 GTX OC and the Sapphire Radeon X1900XTX at this resolution, but not slow enough for it to result in a noticeably poorer gameplay experience. All of these configurations were playable with 4x transparency supersampling / quality adaptive AA, 8xAF and maximum in game details. Of course, the Radeon X1900XTX also had the added benefit of utilising ATI's High Quality Anisotropic Filtering algorithm too.

24" Widescreen Gaming:

At 1920x1200, we were able to enjoy smooth gameplay with 8xAA enabled on the GeForce 7950 GX2. However it was the lesser-quality mode without a supersampling pattern. The video card was not fast enough to play the game with 8xS AA enabled, along with transparency supersampling so we felt that the ever-so slightly lower quality AA pattern looked better if you factor in the ability to use transparency supersampling in conjunction with 8xAA.

Again the remaining three video cards were playable at the same settings as were achievable at 1600x1200. However, this time, the pair of BFG Tech GeForce 7900 GT OCs running in SLI mode proved to be the faster solution of the three. Interestingly, both the Sapphire Radeon X1900XTX and BFG Tech GeForce 7900 GTX OC returned the same average frame rate, but the 7900 GTX had a minimum frame rate advantage.