XFX GeForce 7950 GT 570M Extreme

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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 1.4 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'.

Again, like Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Battlefield 2 suffers from some rather harsh texture filtering optimisations at NVIDIA's default quality setting and thus we have used the high quality driver setting for our BF2 testing. All three cards delivered a very similar gaming experience and are matched up pretty well - the slightly enhanced clock speeds on the XFX GeForce 7950 GT 570M Extreme didn't result in a higher attainable image quality.

ATI's filtering quality was better than NVIDIA's, thanks to high quality anisotropic filtering, while we would give the edge to NVIDIA when it came to transparency anti-aliasing quality. We tried playing the game with 8xS AA, but were greeted with less-than stellar frame rates that were not playable in a multiplayer game scenario.

The higher minimum frame rate means that XFX's GeForce 7950 GT 570M Extreme delivered the better gaming experience, in our opinion. With the high quality driver setting, the image quality gap between ATI and NVIDIA was reduced; however, if you're after slightly better looking pixels, the Radeon X1900XT is a better choice.