Games Benchmarks - Counter Strike: Source, Video Stress Test (DirectX)
In the build up to Half Life 2's final release, Valve have released a version of Counter Strike on their new "Source" engine that's at the core of Half Life 2, and licensable to other developers. The Counter Strike: Source game also provides a "Video Stress Test" benchmark which utilises many of the types of features that will be found in Half Life 2 - while its won't reflect the performance of Half Life 2, graphics boards will be called upon to render the effects in the test in Half Life 2.
| CS: VSS (FPS) | 640x480 | 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1280x960 | 1600x1200 |
| X700 XT | 168.3 | 156.3 | 115.3 | 88.5 | 57.2 |
| X700 PRO | 165.9 | 145.3 | 100.4 | 75.8 | 50.2 |
| X800 XT | 167.4 | 169.4 | 160.3 | 150.5 | 107.8 |
| X600 XT | 143.4 | 101.3 | 66.6 | 50.2 | 30.7 |
| 9800 PRO | 186.5 | 158.6 | 108.1 | 81.5 | 52.4 |
| X700 XT % Faster Than: | 640x480 | 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1280x960 | 1600x1200 |
| X700 PRO | 1.5% | 7.6% | 14.8% | 16.7% | 14.0% |
| X800 XT | 0.6% | -7.7% | -28.1% | -41.2% | -47.0% |
| X600 XT | 17.4% | 54.3% | 73.1% | 76.2% | 86.4% |
| 9800 PRO | -9.8% | -1.4% | 6.7% | 8.6% | 9.2% |
| X700 PRO % Faster Than: | 640x480 | 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1280x960 | 1600x1200 |
| X800 XT | -0.9% | -14.2% | -37.4% | -49.6% | -53.5% |
| X600 XT | 15.7% | 43.4% | 50.8% | 51.0% | 63.6% |
| 9800 PRO | -11.1% | -8.4% | -7.1% | -6.9% | -4.2% |
Despite this being a "video" stress test we can see that CPU performance still has some influence right up to 1280x1024 in this case, and even beyond for the X800.
In this instance we see that the performance differences between the X700 XT and the 9800 PRO is much closer, and the 9800 PRO is a little faster than the X700 PRO. Part of this may be due to Cubemaps being used in the Source engine, which is favouring higher bandwidths, although the increased fill-rates is allowing the X700 XT more performance for other rendering elements in the test.
| CS: VSS, 4x FSAA + 8x AF (FPS) | 640x480 | 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1280x960 | 1600x1200 |
| X700 XT | 146.9 | 116.0 | 76.9 | 60.0 | 31.8 |
| X700 PRO | 130.8 | 94.1 | 63.8 | 49.7 | 33.4 |
| X800 XT | 168.7 | 159.1 | 136.9 | 111.2 | 78.5 |
| X600 XT | 90.5 | 64.8 | 43.5 | 33.6 | 14.3 |
| 9800 PRO | 145.5 | 105.4 | 73.2 | 56.1 | 25.4 |
| X700 XT % Faster Than: | 640x480 | 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1280x960 | 1600x1200 |
| X700 PRO | 12.3% | 23.3% | 20.7% | 20.8% | -4.8% |
| X800 XT | -12.9% | -27.1% | -43.8% | -46.1% | -59.5% |
| X600 XT | 62.3% | 79.0% | 77.1% | 78.6% | 122.0% |
| 9800 PRO | 1.0% | 10.1% | 5.2% | 7.0% | 25.3% |
| X700 PRO % Faster Than: | 640x480 | 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1280x960 | 1600x1200 |
| X800 XT | -22.5% | -40.9% | -53.4% | -55.3% | -57.4% |
| X600 XT | 44.5% | 45.1% | 46.8% | 47.9% | 133.1% |
| 9800 PRO | -10.1% | -10.7% | -12.8% | -11.4% | 31.6% |
Before 1600x1200 we can see a similar trend as Normal rendering with 8x AF and 4x FSAA enabled, with the 9800 PRO outperforming the X700 PRO more than before, likely due to the increased bandwidth required for FSAA. However we can see that at 1600x1200 all the 128MB boards take a dive in fill-rate performance, which allows the X700 PRO to exceed the performance of both the X700 XT and 9800 PRO - this also points to lots of cubemap and render to texture operations which require plenty of frame-buffer space.
