Call of Duty 4 v1.6
The Radeon HD 4850 in CrossFire, GeForce GTX 260 in SLI, and GeForce 9800 GX2 are hardly limited by the CPU, and are able to showcase their full 3D power. The performance of the faster cards, such as the Radeon HD 4870 in CrossFire and the Radeon HD 4870 X2, are shown nicely with Catalyst 8.10. The frame rates compared to Catalyst 8.9 are up to 70% higher.
The GeForce GTX 280 SLI and the Radeon HD 4870 X2 in CrossFire (4CF) are clearly slowed down here. A faster CPU with more overclocking potential could certainly squeeze more 3D power from them. Many of our tested boards benefit from the overclocked quad-core CPU, converting the better baseline performance into more 3D performance. Exceptions to this are the Radeon HD 4850, Radeon HD 4870, GeForce GTX 260, and GeForce GTX 280—the single cards show a decrease in performance in all resolutions due to the faster CPU (QX@3.67) and the new drivers.
Driver Comparison: Catalyst 8.9 Versus Catalyst 8.10 w/ Radeon HD 4870 X2
The increase of 70% is easy to see. With such high frame rates you can activate v-sync and thus avoid tearing.
| Call of Duty 4 in fps | 1280 0xAA | 1680 0xAA | 1920 0xAA | 1280 4xAA | 1680 4xAA | 1920 4xAA | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HD 4870 X2 8.10 QX@3.67 | 276.2 | 265.4 | 226.5 | 239.3 | 199.9 | 177.1 | 1384.4 |
| HD 4870 X2 8.9 QX@3.67 | 168.6 | 156.0 | 138.6 | 146.2 | 129.1 | 118.6 | 857.1 |
| Performance difference in percent | 63.8 | 70.1 | 63.4 | 63.7 | 54.8 | 49.3 | 61.5 |
Through the jump in performance between the Catalyst 8.9 and Catalyst 8.10 is actually an unfair comparison, as the extremely high frame rates have too much of an impact on the overall result. Here it makes sense to look at the normalized percentage.
I Liked this Article, didn't read it word for word so im not going to nit-pic for the sake of it, it confirmed my choice of video card (asus top)and gave benchmarks based on the Processor and speeds i run at....
also goes to show that anyone who bought a 9800gx2 is still sitting pretty.
Thanks Guys.
erm, are you sure about those figures for the 9800GX2 for crysis VHQ @ 1920x1200?
less than 1 frame a second???
otherwise graphics cards comparison article, keep 'em comin'!
cheers,
bill
p.s. stuff and nonsense: http://www.eupeople.net/forum
I believe the less than 1fps crysis result was the problem they were referring to in the text, it is a driver bug with the card if I'm not mistaken.
Would have been nice to see the 4650 in crossfire since it'd be comparable with my 2x3850 setup.
Well done Tino.
Great article.
What is the cooler you have on that processor? Would you recommend that.
Got a quad core thats reaching 70 degrees celsius, seems to high. So i am looking to invest in some non-stock cooling
Great article btw, love the ATI's for now
What was the actaul timedemo used for the Crysis VHQ benchmark ?
hi,
i have a 4870 (1024mb) and i am concidering to get a second, with a asus p6t mobo, will i just beable to plug it in then add the crossfire cable and then use it or is there some fiddling involved. also there is a fairly small gap inbetween the 2 card about 3mm will that still be sufficiant for cooling
kit cowan