Comparison: Factory-Overclocked Versus Reference Graphics

Features
By published

In order to set their products apart, third-party vendors take reference GPUs from AMD and Nvidia, then make their own tweaks to layout, cooling, and performance. We're comparing a tuned-up card from MSI to AMD's reference Radeon HD 5870 to measure value.

Benchmarks: Dragon Age: Origins

Dragon Age is about magic, swords, dwarfs, and elves. You start as a single player and gather a powerful party over time. Various characters and races hold lots of conflicts for you to solve.

We set the graphics quality to very high, which makes the game look so much better. The sceneries aren’t too difficult to handle for our 3D graphics cards, which is why we enable 8x anti-aliasing. Our test scene includes many characters, which results in decreased performance. The graphics cards typically run at 95 to 100% load, the first CPU core at 100% and the others at 25, 45, and 70%.