Benchmark Results: Stalker: Clear Sky

As seen in 3DMark, the Radeon HD 4770 hangs right up near the Radeon HD 4850, exerting itself as a solid value. Both cards outpace the Radeon HD 4830 by a decent margin. Of course, the shocker is Nvidia’s GeForce GTS 250 snaking a lead that we wouldn’t have expected given the 3DMark scores. 

Not surprisingly, given the previous chart, the GeForce GTS 250 sweeps our three test resolutions once again. All of these numbers were run using the lowest common denominator of settings: mainly, without the game’s DirectX 10.1-class anti-aliasing enabled to make the scores comparable.

Foreshadowing the simultaneous outcry of AMD loyalists who’ll undoubtedly point out that this competitive advantage should be given to the Radeon cards, I preemptively ran comparison scores with DirectX 10.1 enabled as well in case there is a true performance boost available.

At 1920x1200, the Radeon HD 4850 achieves 12.7 frames per second with “Use DX 10.1” checked (compared to 11.3 frames without it). Looking for a more playable frame rate, we dropped to 1280x1024 and recorded 21.35 frames—down from 21.5. The moral of the story? Don’t expect DX 10.1 to make this title any more playable than it was without the feature enabled.