ATI Radeon X1900 XT and XTX

The X1900 XT and XTX have incremental performance gains over X1800 XT in Far Cry at all resolutions, with all the ATI boards making the GTX 512 look rather daft in Crytek's FPS title. The ATI products are faster as a group with AA and AF applied than the GTX 512 without, in our benchmark (a section of Pier).

Another Direct3D 9 game with high ALU:TEX, Black and White 2 with all the graphical options at max, as we test it, is a killer of modern graphics hardware. The X1900 XTX is 15 per cent faster than the GTX 512 at 1920 x 1200, and over 20 per cent faster at the playable resolution at the settings we test at. The R580 offers up 30 per cent more performance than R520, XTX compared to XT.

With Call of Duty 2 throwing its toys out of the pram, CoR not working properly on Nvidia hardware (*titter*) and Need For Speed throwing hissy fits, Quake 4 is our last game test for the time being, until we fix the issues. Keep an eye out over the next couple of days.

If your choice is between the boards on test, and you love Quake 4 and you're looking forward to Quake Wars so much you drool in pints, Nvidia's GTX 512 is the hardware for you. The basic design of G70 lends itself to nice Doom 3 engine performance, and ATI's OpenGL ICD isn't the hottest component to come bundled with CATALYST, if we're all honest. R580 offers up usable increases in performance over R520, but X1900 XTX isn't a detectable performance win over X1900 XT.