The Fastest 3D Cards Go Head-To-Head
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Page 1:Taxing Modern CPUs With Powerful Graphics
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Page 2:Comparing The GPUs And Test Setup
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Page 3:Radeon HD 4850
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Page 4:CrossFire With Radeon HD 4850
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Page 5:Radeon HD 4870 OC
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Page 6:CrossFire With Radeon HD 4870 OC
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Page 7:GeForce GTX 260 OC
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Page 8:SLI With GeForce GTX 260 OC
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Page 9:GeForce GTX 280 Superclocked
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Page 10:SLI With GeForce GTX 280 Superclocked
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Page 11:Assassin’s Creed v1.02
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Page 12:Call of Duty 4 v1.6
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Page 13:Crysis v1.21 High Quality
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Page 14:Crysis v1.21 Very High Quality
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Page 15:Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.4
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Page 16:Half Life 2: Episode 2
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Page 17:Mass Effect
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Page 18:Microsoft Flight Simulator X SP2
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Page 19:World in Conflict v1.05
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Page 20:3DMark06 1280x1024 v1.1.0
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Page 21:How Overclocking Affected The MSI Cards
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Page 22:Overall Performance
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Page 23:Price/Performance Comparison
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Page 24:How About Graphics Image Quality?
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Page 25:Power Consumption, Noise, And Temperature
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Page 26:Frames-Per-Watt For The GTX 200-Series And HD 4800-Series
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Page 27:GTX 200-Series And HD 4800-Series At 1280x1024
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Page 28:GTX 200-Series and HD 4800-Series At 1680x1050
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Page 29:GTX 200-Series And HD 4800-Series at 1920x1200
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Page 30:All Cards Compared At 1280x1024
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Page 31:All Cards Compared At 1680x1050
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Page 32:All Cards Compared At 1920x1200
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Page 33:Is The Upgrade Worthwhile?
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Page 34:Swapping Old Chips For New
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Page 35:Evaluation Of The New Generation
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Page 36:Conclusions – Radeon HD 4850 Is The Winner
Overall Performance
The first percentage value given (Percent fps) is the ratio between the cards, if the overall result is calculated using the frame rates of all tested games added together as the basis. It acts as a method of orientation, so that you are better able to evaluate the basic power of each card. It is a useful overview if you do not know what resolution you wish to use for gaming. The second reason for this table is that, even with extremely different frame rates, the slowest graphics card is still the point of reference at 100%.
Overall performance | fps | Percent fps |
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GeForce GTX 280 (1024 MB) | 3765.6 | 4 02.2 |
GeForce 8800 Ultra SLI (768 MB) | 3534.8 | 377.6 |
GeForce GTX 280 SLI (1024 MB) | 3522.0 | 376.2 |
GeForce 9800 GTX SLI (512 MB) | 3505.8 | 374.5 |
Radeon HD 4870 CF (512 MB) | 3482.9 | 372.0 |
GeForce GTX 260 SLI (896 MB) | 3481.1 | 371.8 |
GeForce 8800 GTS SLI (512 MB) | 3468.9 | 370.5 |
GeForce 8800 GT SLI (1024 MB) | 3467.2 | 370.3 |
GeForce GTX 260 (896 MB) | 3464.8 | 370.1 |
GeForce 8800 GT SLI (512 MB) | 3411.9 | 364.4 |
Radeon HD 4870 (512 MB) | 3355.7 | 358.4 |
GeForce 9800 GX2 (2x512 MB) | 3351.4 | 358.0 |
GeForce 9600 GT SLI (1024 MB) | 3318.1 | 354.4 |
Radeon HD 4850 CF (512 MB) | 3241.4 | 346.2 |
GeForce 8800 Ultra (768 MB) | 3119.8 | 333.2 |
GeForce 8800 GTS OC (512 MB) | 3037.2 | 324.4 |
GeForce 9800 GTX (512 MB) | 2982.7 | 318.6 |
Radeon HD 4850 (512 MB) | 2965.6 | 316.8 |
GeForce 8800 GTS (512 MB) | 2940.1 | 314.0 |
GeForce 8800 GTX (768 MB) | 2926.4 | 312.6 |
Radeon HD 3870 CF (512 MB) | 2893.2 | 309.0 |
GeForce 8800 GT (1024 MB) | 2788.0 | 297.8 |
Radeon HD 3870 X2 (2x512 MB) | 2787.8 | 297.8 |
GeForce 8800 GT (512 MB) | 2751.3 | 293.9 |
Radeon HD 3850 CF (256 MB) | 2589.3 | 276.6 |
GeForce 8800 GTS SLI (320 MB) | 2473.2 | 264.2 |
GeForce 9600 GT (1024 MB) | 2451.8 | 261.9 |
Radeon HD 3870 (512 MB) | 2386.7 | 254.9 |
GeForce 8800 GTS (640 MB) | 2369.6 | 253.1 |
GeForce 8800 GTS (320 MB) | 2126.0 | 227.1 |
Radeon HD 3850 (256 MB) | 2009.9 | 214.7 |
GeForce 8600 GTS SLI (256 MB) | 1780.7 | 190.2 |
Radeon HD 3650 CF (512 MB) | 1646.4 | 175.9 |
GeForce 8600 GT SLI (256 MB) | 1516.4 | 162.0 |
GeForce 8600 GTS (512 MB) | 1257.9 | 134.4 |
GeForce 8600 GTS (256 MB) | 1129.6 | 120.7 |
Radeon HD 3650 (512 MB) | 1002.3 | 107.1 |
GeForce 8600 GT (256 MB) | 936.2 | 100.0 |
The second percentage value (Percent norm.) shows the results of each game separately in percentage terms. The normalization means that the different frame rates across the benchmarks are evened out—otherwise Call of Duty 4 with 180 fps would be weighted six times as much as Crysis at 30 fps. Also, powerful cards with extremely high frame rates would have less influence on the overall results.
The sequence of the cards in this table may change when compared to the overall results. The different frame rates achieved in the individual benchmarks are here evened out, so you can see the actual percentage increase in performance.
Overall performance | fps | Percent norm. |
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GeForce GTX 280 (1024 MB) | 3765.6 | 479.1 |
GeForce GTX 280 SLI (1024 MB) | 3522.0 | 457.3 |
GeForce 8800 Ultra SLI (768 MB) | 3534.8 | 457.3 |
GeForce GTX 260 SLI (896 MB) | 3481.1 | 453.8 |
Radeon HD 4870 CF (512 MB) | 3482.9 | 448.9 |
GeForce 8800 GT SLI (1024 MB) | 3467.2 | 444.3 |
GeForce GTX 260 (896 MB) | 3464.8 | 437.2 |
GeForce 9800 GTX SLI (512 MB) | 3505.8 | 436.6 |
GeForce 8800 GTS SLI (512 MB) | 3468.9 | 435.4 |
GeForce 9800 GX2 (2x512 MB) | 3351.4 | 427.2 |
GeForce 8800 GT SLI (512 MB) | 3411.9 | 425.5 |
GeForce 9600 GT SLI (1024 MB) | 3318.1 | 425.0 |
Radeon HD 4870 (512 MB) | 3355.7 | 424.6 |
Radeon HD 4850 CF (512 MB) | 3241.4 | 424.0 |
GeForce 8800 Ultra (768 MB) | 3119.8 | 391.9 |
Radeon HD 3870 CF (512 MB) | 2893.2 | 387.0 |
GeForce 8800 GTS OC (512 MB) | 3037.2 | 375.4 |
Radeon HD 4850 (512 MB) | 2965.6 | 370.5 |
Radeon HD 3870 X2 (2x512 MB) | 2787.8 | 368.4 |
GeForce 9800 GTX (512 MB) | 2982.7 | 367.3 |
GeForce 8800 GTX (768 MB) | 2926.4 | 364.0 |
GeForce 8800 GTS (512 MB) | 2940.1 | 361.8 |
GeForce 8800 GT (1024 MB) | 2788.0 | 342.2 |
GeForce 8800 GT (512 MB) | 2751.3 | 335.0 |
Radeon HD 3850 CF (256 MB) | 2589.3 | 333.1 |
Radeon HD 3870 (512 MB) | 2386.7 | 301.3 |
GeForce 9600 GT (1024 MB) | 2451.8 | 296.2 |
GeForce 8800 GTS (640 MB) | 2369.6 | 285.0 |
GeForce 8800 GTS SLI (320 MB) | 2473.2 | 268.5 |
Radeon HD 3850 (256 MB) | 2009.9 | 239.3 |
GeForce 8800 GTS (320 MB) | 2126.0 | 231.3 |
Radeon HD 3650 CF (512 MB) | 1646.4 | 210.1 |
GeForce 8600 GTS SLI (256 MB) | 1780.7 | 185.6 |
GeForce 8600 GT SLI (256 MB) | 1516.4 | 160.6 |
GeForce 8600 GTS (512 MB) | 1257.9 | 148.4 |
GeForce 8600 GTS (256 MB) | 1129.6 | 122.1 |
Radeon HD 3650 (512 MB) | 1002.3 | 121.7 |
GeForce 8600 GT (256 MB) | 936.2 | 102.3 |
Since the percent value is expressed relative to the minimum value, it is possible that none of the graphics cards drops to 100 percent in all of the games. The basis of the 100 percent is the minimum values of all test candidates.
- Taxing Modern CPUs With Powerful Graphics
- Comparing The GPUs And Test Setup
- Radeon HD 4850
- CrossFire With Radeon HD 4850
- Radeon HD 4870 OC
- CrossFire With Radeon HD 4870 OC
- GeForce GTX 260 OC
- SLI With GeForce GTX 260 OC
- GeForce GTX 280 Superclocked
- SLI With GeForce GTX 280 Superclocked
- Assassin’s Creed v1.02
- Call of Duty 4 v1.6
- Crysis v1.21 High Quality
- Crysis v1.21 Very High Quality
- Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.4
- Half Life 2: Episode 2
- Mass Effect
- Microsoft Flight Simulator X SP2
- World in Conflict v1.05
- 3DMark06 1280x1024 v1.1.0
- How Overclocking Affected The MSI Cards
- Overall Performance
- Price/Performance Comparison
- How About Graphics Image Quality?
- Power Consumption, Noise, And Temperature
- Frames-Per-Watt For The GTX 200-Series And HD 4800-Series
- GTX 200-Series And HD 4800-Series At 1280x1024
- GTX 200-Series and HD 4800-Series At 1680x1050
- GTX 200-Series And HD 4800-Series at 1920x1200
- All Cards Compared At 1280x1024
- All Cards Compared At 1680x1050
- All Cards Compared At 1920x1200
- Is The Upgrade Worthwhile?
- Swapping Old Chips For New
- Evaluation Of The New Generation
- Conclusions – Radeon HD 4850 Is The Winner
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.
Remember, the more you know.
but yes the article was off to a great start, maybe throw some vantage in there as well?
Precisely; several other websites tested with 8.7 and 8.8 long before this article was published. Why couldn't you? Look at the 8.6 release notes; it doesn't even mention the HD4000 series cards as supported devices.
Brilliant guys.
This is another reason why the results are tanked, in XP you get 15% more performance compared to these values
After having the Mythbusters appear, you would think this would be the most comprehensive, "scientific," factual, and update article meeting Tom's usual standards.... I didn't finish reading this.
(82 temperature in 2D 69 in 3D with no fanfix)
Also, I can understand why TH didn't have time to use 8.8 since it was released publicly on August 20, 2008 (Although ATI would have gladly released a beta version to TH for testing purposes).
However, AMD publicly released stable Catalyst 8.7(internal version 8.512) on July 21, 2008. That's more than a month ago. It has numerous improvements (for example, CF performance increase, improved stability and performance under Vista). To be honest, most of the improvements range from 4% to 15%. (In CF case, up to 1.7 X scaling)
TH has rarely been unfair and/or inaccurate and they always owned up to their mistakes before, and I trust them to re-test ATI products with at least 8.7 if not 8.8 to continue to uphold their values and integrity.
Now on to my criticism.
I can understand how you want to keep the results homogeneous with previous results but if you already know that a stock QX6800 will bottleneck the system, be proactive in fixing it. At the very least you should have done a small segment of the review showing the newer cards with a quad core overclocked to 4.0Ghz.
Also, if you have ever read any of the older Toms articles, you would know that you can still minimise the bottleneck from a slow GPU bye raising the resolution. Perhaps you should test the fastest cards at the highest resolutions?
I can also understand why you did not use the latest nVidia drivers. It takes time to create a review of this scale and the GF8/9 series drivers have been stable for some time. As the GT 200 series brings no new features to the table, they would needed little optimisation for their newer cards allowing the slightly dated drivers to perform nicely.
What I can not understand is why you would use ATI's 8.6 drivers??
The 8.7 drivers have been out for more than a month bringing quite a few fixes/optimisations with it. I understand it probably took more than 9 days to complete all of these benchmarks (today is the 29th, the 8.8 drivers were officially released on the 20th) but you should have called ATI and asked for their latest drivers. The 8.8 drivers were leaked at least a week before the official release which means, if you could nurture a relationship with the people you review, they could/probably would have provided them to you. There is still no excuse I can see for testing with the old 8.6 drivers. Seriously, it does not even have official support for the 48X0 cards...
From the title of the article,"The Fastest 3D Cards Go Head-To-Head", I would have assumed that you would have been testing the Fastest 3D cards? What happened to your 4870x2? As you have already attempted to review it, we know you have your hands on one. How can you claim to review the "Fastest 3D Cards" and still leave out the fastest card?
In summation, I liked many things from this article. The layout was nice and a little more technical than we have been seeing as of late. I enjoyed the comparison charts at the end and I think you should adopt a similar method for the CPU and GPU charts. I would have thought this was an excellent and well thought out article if it had not been for the glaring and obvious deficiencies in reason. I give you credit for stepping Toms in the right direction. With a little more unbiased comparison, critical thinking and common sense I could come to see reviews such as this in a very positive light.