The Fastest 3D Cards Go Head-To-Head

Swapping Old Chips For New

Swapping a GeForce 9800 GX2 for a GTX 280 provides slight benefits in Crysis and in World in Conflict (at high resolution with anti-aliasing), but the dual-chip card had minor optimization problems in the test. In the other games, the increases are beyond 60, 80 or 100 fps.

Taking an older GeForce 8800 GTS 512 and putting in a new GTX 260 will actually only show visible improvements in World in Conflict. In Mass Effect, the new GTX 260 brings slight benefits with anti-aliasing at high resolutions—you actually feel the effects of the faster memory. In Crysis the increases are good, but the frame rates remain under 25 fps.

If you add the Radeon HD 4850 to this comparison, the results don’t get much better. The AMD chip provides benefits in World in Conflict and leaves the competition way behind.

A change from the Radeon HD 3850 to the Radeon HD 4850 brings visibly more power. The UT3 Engine (Mass Effect) responds particularly well to the new graphics chip. Assassin’s Creed and World in Conflict reach smooth playing ranges, with excellent optimization of DirectX 10 and anti-aliasing.

The change from the Radeon HD 3870 to the HD 4870 is similar to that going from the 3850 to the 4850—the UT3 Engine of Mass Effect runs better, and Assassin’s Creed and World in Conflict can be played more smoothly with full graphics quality and high resolutions.

Changing from the dual-chip card with the Radeon HD 3870 X2 to the new HD 4870 isn’t very sensible. The difference in performance in the lower regions is too low. But for a new purchase, you should take advantage of the additional performance and go straight for the Radeon HD 4870.

  • San Pedro
    Looks like the results for SLI and Crossfire were switched with the single card results. . .
    Reply
  • Duncan NZ
    Not a bad article, really comprehensive.
    My one complaint? Why use that CPU when you know that the test cards are going to max it out? Why not a quad core OC'ed to 4GHz? It'd give far more meaning to the SLI results. We don't want results that we can duplicate at home, we want results that show what these cards can do. Its a GPU card comparason, not a complain about not having a powerful enough CPU story.

    Oh? And please get a native english speaker to give it the once over for spelling and grammar errors, although this one had far less then many articles posted lately.
    Reply
  • elbert
    No 4870x2 in CF so its the worlds top end Nvidia vs ATI mid to low end.
    Reply
  • Lightnix
    It'd be a good article if you'd used a powerful enough CPU and up to date Radeon drivers (considering we're now up to 8.8 now), I mean are those even the 'hotfix' 8.6's or just the vanilla drivers?
    Reply
  • elbert
    Version AMD Catalyst 8.6? Why not just say i'm using ATI drivers with little to no optimizations for the 4800's. This is why the CF benchmarks tanked.
    Reply
  • at 1280, all of the highend cards were CPU limited. at that resolution, you need a 3.2-3.4 c2d to feed a 3870... this article had so much potential, and yet... so much work, so much testing, fast for nothing, because most of the results are very cpu limited (except 1920@AA).
    Reply
  • wahdangun
    WTF, hd4850 SHOULD be a lot faster than 9600 GT and 8800 GT even tough they have 1Gig of ram
    Reply
  • mjam
    No 4870X2 and 1920 X 1200 max resolution tested. How about finishing the good start of an article with the rest of it...
    Reply
  • I agree, the 4870 X2 should have been in there and should have used the updated drivers. Good article but I think you fell short on finishing it.
    Reply
  • @pulasky - Rage much? It's called driver issues you dumbass. Some games are more optimised for multicard setups than others, and even then some favour SLi to Crossfire. And if you actually READ the article rather than let your shrinken libido get the better of you, you'll find that Crossfire does indeed work in CoD4.

    Remember, the more you know.
    Reply