[Testing] Sapphire X2900XT

[Xion X2]

The guy in question that we're speaking about already owns a 8800GTX, he asked if he should sell his GTX and buy a HD 2900xt, which honestly he shouldn't and I think we can both agree on that.

Why even bring this up? I never implied the guy should trade his card in.

As for forum numbers, I now have a hard time believing anyone making claims, even with screenshots showing said claims...

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...=147978&page=2

I'm not saying you can't trust forum members numbers, I'm just saying that after that I'm having a rather difficult time believing claimed numbers from people regardless of which card they have.

Well I don't know what to tell you. In my personal opinion, Hardocp doesn't have a clue what they're doing. My #s were not forged, and I can tell you for a fact that HDR or AA was not "broken" on Oblivion like some people have claimed. Both were working just fine. I even benched the game again w/o AA to prove it. The framerate shot up (almost doubled) and jaggies were much more apparent than on the screens w/ AA enabled. And there was absolutely no comparison between an OC'D GTS and OC'd XT as far as performance goes. The XT beat it handily.. and outperformed a stock GTX on a few occasions.

I've actually owned an 8800GTX before this card (long story), and the IQ between the two looks identical to me on Oblivion.. a game I played all the time on my 8800GTX. And performance between the two is very, very similar.. almost identical. I would say the GTX is probably a little quicker but not by much.

I realize why you would be skeptical; I guess all I can do is state my case and results. It's up to you whether or not to believe them over some review site that could be receiving benefits under the table from a major card distributor.

But Hardocp's results are very fishy, to say the least. The 8.37.4.2s brought me 400% increase in Oblivion with the exact same I.Q. I benched both back to back with screenshots to prove it. I uninstalled-->reinstalled the driver multiple times for a control measure. There's a large gap in performance between the two. Settings were as follows:

8xAF, 4xAA w/ Adaptive (both enabled in driver)
HDR (in-game)
Maximum Settings, draw distances maxed (including grass)
Default INI (no tweaks)
Catalyst A.I. = Low, Off (no performance difference w/ either)


So it's my opinion that Hardocp is full of ****. After viewing their behavior, I will never, EVER read another one of their reviews or link to their lousy website. I think those who forge benchmarks are pathetic, myself. I'd never do something like that.. why would I? What good is it to do something like that when you know yourself that it's not true?