Radeon 9600 XT/X600 XT and GMA 900 gaming
Again, we've kept the resolution low with the Radeon cards. We want to highlight the impact of PCI-E and chipset differences, and we also want to minimize the impact of the higher memory clocks on the X600 XT versus the 9600 XT.

I've also included performance numbers for the Intel 915G chipset's Graphic Media Accelerator 900 in the results below. Matching up to the Radeon X600 isn't really a fair fight, but you should get an idea about its performance. Unfortunately, Comanche 4 wouldn't run on the GMA 900 because of its lack of a vertex shader. Also, Far Cry crashed immediately on initializing the graphics engine on the GMA 900, so I don't have any results for it.

Unreal Tournament 2004

Far Cry

Quake III Arena

Comanche 4

Splinter Cell

The 915G and 925X look a little better here. Is it because of the X600 XT's slight memory clock speed advantage, or because of the X600 XT's native PCI Express interface? Hard to say. But let's try something a little different . . . .