At the higher end of the mainstream spectrum, ATI's RADEON X800 256MB put up a very strong showing against the GeForce 6800. Each card won their fair share of tests, with the X800 edging out the GeForce 6800 in 4xAA and 2xAA modes, while the GeForce 6800 clearly outperformed the X800 with 2xAA/8xAF. We honestly questioned if the GeForce cards were running AF properly, double and even triple checking our results, but sure enough, the images represented in our AF screenshots on page two were consistent with the visuals displayed during our 2xAA/8xAF testing. It appears that the GeForce cards are just doing a better job at handling AF at this point.

Of course, keep in mind that we're running the beta NVIDIA driver provided with the BF2 demo, ForceWare 77.30. While we were running CATALYST AI at the standard setting found in CATALYST 5.6, we have a feeling that ATI's driver team hasn't had enough time to implement texture optimizations into BF2 just yet, so ATI's performance will likely improve in future CATALYST releases.

On the lower end of the scale, the GeForce 6600 GT clearly outperformed the RADEON X700 PRO 256MB, sweeping all tests.