Upgraded my system,
P4 2GHz, Audigy2, 256MB of 2700DDR, Gigabyte PE667 Ultra, R8500 AIW, all latest drivers, DX9c.
to a Saphire X800Pro, and the fps at 1024x768 is the same except for some higher peaks and a higher avg fps of 2-5 (not sure on this number, but it was barely noticeable visually) or so. It will run faster with the sliders on the performance side, although only the top and bottom sliders can be put to the max with little loss of fps.
No AF but AA is set to 6x and temporal, as it doesn't have much effect on the framerate.
Sound acceleration is one notch under maximum in the windows/dxdiag options, there are no unnecessary processes running, no bluetooth, no motherboard utilities, no explorer, nada.
Doing about 27fps in the tower with the middle slider 1/3 from the right, the other two maxed. Getting about 35fps in the air with medium amount of things in the sky, low 20s with heavy field porkage, and from 40 to 75 (screen refresh) when above ground detail objects range and clear skies.
side note, with this upgrade, in Doom3 I went from 35fps avg with everything to the minimum (incl. 640x resolution) except bump mapping and realtime shadows, to 35-65fps avg in Ultra at 1024x.
