Benchmark Results: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (DirectX 9)
We’ve long considered Call of Duty to be a processor-bound title, since its graphics aren’t terribly demanding (similar to Left 4 Dead in that way). However, with a Core i7-980X under the hood, there’s ample room for these cards to breathe a bit.
Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 480 takes an early lead, but drops a position with each successive resolution increase, eventually landing in third place at 2560x1600 behind ATI’s Radeon HD 5970 and its own GeForce GTX 295. Still, that’s an impressive showing in light of the previous metric that might have suggested otherwise. Right out of the gate, GTX 480 looks like more of a contender for AMD's Radeon HD 5970 than the single-GPU 5870.
Perhaps the most compelling performer is the GeForce GTX 470, though, which goes heads-up against the Radeon HD 5870, losing out only at 2560x1600 with and without anti-aliasing turned on.
And while you can’t buy them anymore, it’s interesting to note that anyone running a Radeon HD 4870 X2 is still in very solid shape; the card holds up incredibly well in Call of Duty, right up to 2560x1600.
