HIS Radeon X850XT IceQ II Turbo

NFS: Underground 2

Publisher: Electronic Arts

We have used The Need For Speed: Underground 2 here to represent a typical driving simulator - it's based on the DirectX 9.0 API, and makes use of lots of DirectX 9.0 features, including motion blur and light trails. Anti-Aliasing was controlled from inside the game, while Anisotropic Filtering was controlled via the driver control panel, as the game does not feature in-game controls for Anisotropic Filtering.

We used a 3-lap race on the "Parkade Track 1" Street-X circuit with three opponents for our manual run through. The circuit is a fairly high-speed one, but contains lots of corners - it makes good use of motion blur and light trails.

Below is a table of the best-playable settings that we found best for each video card configuration. In this title, we found that 28 to 30 frames per second minimum and a target of 38 frames per second (or higher) for the average frame rate delivered smooth and fluid game play.


In Need For Speed: Underground 2, the HighTech Radeon X850 XT operating at both its default and enhanced iTurbo clock speeds was completely smooth at 1280x1024 4xAA 16xAF, with the difference in frame rate being a mere 3 frames per second on average, while the minimum frame rate did not change. This suggests that the minimum frame rate has an element of CPU limitation, rather than a slight difference in the speed of the video card rendering the title.

We saw a similar story with the GeForce 7800 GTX – it was the fastest video card by a clear margin and was able to deliver an awesome gaming experience at 1600x1200 2xAA 16xAF. The GeForce 6800 Ultra and Radeon X800 XL were both slower than the HIS Radeon X850 XT iTurbo, delivering smooth frame rates at 1280x1024 2xAA 16xAF and 1024x768 4xAA 16xAF respectively.