µATX Part 1: ATI Radeon Xpress 1250 Performance Review

Gaming Performance

As usual, gaming performance was tested with a variety of current games. We ran benchmarks at a 1024x768 resolution. Much more than this resulted in completely unplayable game conditions although we did find several older non-FPS games such as the Civilization series, Railroad Tycoon 3, Rollercoaster Tycoon series, and others played acceptability at 1280x1024 with the quality settings at normal. We concentrated on Direct X games as OpenGL support under Vista remains sketchy at this time. We are also including results with the HD 2600XT and 8600GTS video cards for comparison.

Battlefield 2

This benchmark is performed using DICE's built-in demo playback functionality with additional capture capabilities designed in house. During the benchmark, the camera switches between players and vehicles in order to capture the most action possible. There is a significant amount of smoke, explosions, and vehicle usage as this a very GPU intensive Battlefield 2 benchmark. We run Battlefield 2 using medium quality graphics settings available in the video settings. The game itself is best experienced with average in-game frame rates of 35 and up.



Half Life 2: Lost Coast

We use the built-in timedemo feature to benchmark the game. Our timedemo consists of starting at the bottom of the hill near the lake and ending in the old church. The Source engine timedemo feature is similar to the nettimedemo of Id's Doom 3 engine, in that it plays back more than just the graphics. The visual quality settings were set to high or medium where possible with HDR off. While the Source engine is notorious for giving great frame rates for almost any hardware setup, we find the game isn't as enjoyable if it isn't running at 30fps or above.



Company of Heroes

Company of Heroes continues to be one of the best RTS games released in recent history. This game is very GPU intensive and also requires a hefty CPU at times. The game contains a built-in performance test that utilizes the game engine to generate several different action scenes along with a coffee argument as a sideline distraction before the war starts. We found the performance test gives a good indication of how well your system will perform throughout the game on average. Some of the in-game action sequences are more demanding than the performance test, but we generally found the game to be enjoyable with an average performance test frame rate above 25fps.



Sims2

Sims 2 was released over two years ago and is constantly being updated with best selling expansion packs. In testing with the various expansion packs we did not notice any measurable differences in performance so our benchmark will be reflective of game play using the base game title. This particular game requires a decent CPU and very good GPU when utilizing the antialiasing, shadow, or high quality texture options.

We utilize FRAPS to capture the results from our replay file. Our benchmark consists of a three character scenario that takes approximately twenty minutes to set up and cycle through a series of daily events. The camera movements are varied as is the movement so we feel like this benchmark represents the typical game. We set most video options to high but disable shadows. We generally found the game to be enjoyable with an average frame rate above 30fps.



Supreme Commander

Supreme Commander is one of the favorite real time strategy games around the office as it continues to provide a great deal of replay value and the graphics are very good once the eye candy is turned on. What we especially like about the game is the fact that it can bring the best system to its knees and that fact makes it a great system benchmark. This particular game requires both a very good CPU and GPU when playing the game at anything above 1024x768 with decent settings. We utilize the game's built-in benchmark and generally find the game to be enjoyable with an average frame rate above 25fps.



Gaming Summary

What else can you really say after reviewing the results? They are generally pathetic from a gaming perspective but the X1250 obviously has some potential left in it at the lower resolutions. Considering the G33 was launched last spring and promised to bring about a difference in onboard video performance, we are still not seeing the results living up to the hype. Intel recently released beta drivers for XP that have somewhat improved its performance in many games and even lets it run titles that were previously black screen/fail-to-load territory.

The G33 was incapable of running Battlefield 2 and Supreme Commander while offline testing with Quake 4 and Prey resulted in an interesting slide show that allowed us to see every detail of the benchmark session in a slow, excruciating way that would make a visit to the dentist for a root canal a better alternative. However, it was able to generate decent results (for this grouping) in Company of Heroes and Sims 2.

Image quality generally favored the X1250 in most games we tested. The G33 had acceptable image quality but at times we could tell certain details were not as sharp or even evident when compared to the X1250 boards. While most people will not be buying these boards for gaming purposes without an external GPU solution, we did find that reducing the resolutions to 800x600 and slightly increasing the quality settings did result in a passable experience on a temporary basis. The graphics capabilities of these chipsets in gaming are best left for older 3D games. Tetris, Solitaire, and Minesweeper also run without a hitch on these IGP solutions.