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Roundup: Mainstream Graphics Cards From ATI And Nvidia

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Benchmark Results: Left 4 Dead

In its 3D shooter game world, protagonists bite, claw, and blast their way through hordes of zombies. This game runs on an enhanced version of the Source Engine from Half-Life 2. Owing to excellent support for multi-core processors and a modest appetite for 3D effects, gamers are virtually guaranteed completely fluid frame rates in Left 4 Dead.

For high-end tests, the graphics-quality slider was set to Very High, which serves up the best possible graphics quality. The highest test setting for AA was 8x. We used a variety of timedemo items for our frame rate tests, where the Survivors group conducts a running street battle with countless zombies.

74 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Bloodblender
    All I can say is that Tom's recent articles have been an excellent read, and this exactly the stuff I (as well as many others) require for their research purposes. Keep up the great work!
    Reply
  • dirtmountain
    Nice article,very well done, but you need to show the 4670 in CF as costing $162, not $81 as shown in the final chart.
    Reply
  • rambo117
    the iceQ concept is amazing. keeps my 3870s nice and chilly (70C) while hardcore gaming
    and not to mention they both look intimidating in my case ;)
    Reply
  • pij
    Quick question -

    4770 in crossfire or single 4890 best bet???..
    Reply
  • to me the gaming benches are most important but energy efficiency and heat dissipation run a close 2nd. thanks for providing it all!
    Reply
  • Julianbreaker
    Newegg has quite a few 4850s that retail for $100 and it appears to be getting consistently better benchmarks than the 4770. I am confused as to why you would not recommend it over the 4770. Perhaps you are confused by simple maths.
    Reply
  • radiowars
    PijQuick question - 4770 in crossfire or single 4890 best bet???..They already did a whole article on that...
    Reply
  • bucifer
    I don't understand why you still won't use the 1GB version of the Radeon 4870. It's clear to me that the card is limited by it's amount of video memory when using hi-res, AA and AF.
    Searching for prices in US and Europe it retails cheaper than the GTX260(192 or 216).
    The point is: the card should be included in the test just as the GTX260-216. It's clearly a better option than the 512 mb version and it's good for comparison!
    Reply
  • masterjaw
    Nice article here. Most importantly, no unnecessary bias included.
    Reply
  • holodust
    Nice article, but I don't see how testing these cards on i7 920@3.8 fits into mainstream.
    Reply