Well, some goblins kicked in and we were forced to take some more time before posting this one - and do some additional testing. It's time to check how R600 performs on Intel's 975 chipset. We actually picked these four platforms to broaden the range of possibilities for our readers so they can know what to expect from this card on their own computer. We received quite a few e-mails from people asking us to test R600 on some other platforms as well and we will, as soon as the fourth dimension allows us to do so. So, here we go again, R600-land...
[and their conclusion for those who want to skip the charts]
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As you can see for yourself, R600 performs quite a bit better on Intel's 975 chipset then on NVIDIA's NF590 SLI, to a point where we are really pleasantly surprised. We can only see one pretty strange result here, in high-res/high-AA/AF FEAR test for 8800GTS 640, but that's just about everything strange. We feel that, although we know that there are new drivers coming out, AMD/ATi really still must make some serious efforts on the driver side, where they were traditionally good. If latest news we heard are even remotely close to the truth, things are looking pretty good then. We also noticed that at lower resolutions R600's seem "a bit more CPU limited" then 8800, which is very interesting. When you crank R600 up with higher resolutions (1920x1200 and 2560x1600) and 8x/16xAA settings, this thing starts breathing and doing the job right. We also removed Company of Heroes because it really behaves strangely so it's out until we figure out what's going on.
There's one other "trick" here, and that's image quality, also "to be covered" in a separate article. In all honesty, 8 and 16xAA modes look a bit better on HD2900XT then on 8800 series. This is one of those things that make HD2900XT what it is - very interesting product. Stay tuned for CrossFire vs SLI article tomorrow, done on 975 chipset for CrossFire and 680i chipset for 8800's.