The test results were pretty interesting. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to run Half-Life 2 on the X1800 XT, since Valve decided to update the code and break all of the demos that everyone uses for benchmarking. However Far Cry threw up some interesting numbers. As expected the X1800 XT was CPU locked at the lower resolutions, much like the 7800 GTX. However, the 7800 GTX was CPU locked at about 20fps above the X1800 XT. The 7800 GTX remained in the lead up to the point where the CPU ceased to be the limiting factor - then the X1800 XT edged ahead. I quizzed ATI about this and was told that the X1800 XT does have a more significant CPU overhead than the 7800 GTX, but it scales better once the CPU is out of the equation.