Report: the Radeon HD 2600 & 2400 (page 13: Age of Empire III)

Age of Empire III

For this test, we saved a sequence in which we carry out a specific movement when the game is paused. Aniso is activated in the game as well as HDR in high quality mode. However, we should note that while results are similar for both ATI and Nvidia, it’s a different process. Based on FP16 for Nvidia, it’s in FX10 for ATI. While it only has 2 bits for transparency, the FX10 mode allows staying in the classic 32 bits, which is ideal for performances. In medium quality, HDR is deactivated as well as high quality shadows and trilinear filtering is used.

Despite a less heavy rendering for ATI, Nvidia shows higher performances in this game.

In medium quality, the Radeon HD lose quite a bit with the activation of FSAA. This also happens to the GeForce 7 but for a different reason. Given that they don’t support HDR FP16 and MSAA, a 2.25x supersampling is emulated by developers, significantly reducing performances.