Benchmark Results: Metro 2033 (DX11)
AMD got a rough start in Metro 2033 when the game launched earlier this year. Slowly but surely, though, performance has improved in a very quantitative way. Though the top spot goes to Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 580 across the board, AMD’s Radeon HD 6850s in CrossFire work their way up the ladder at 2560x1600, scoring a second-place finish.
The Radeon HD 6970 shows its mettle here, underperforming the GeForce GTX 570 at 1680x1050 and 1920x1200, but making up the difference at 2560x1600, besting two GeForce GTX 460 1GB cards in SLI (worth about $400). You can’t get around the fact that, for somewhere around $380, you could get a pair of 6850s in CrossFire, though. The single-card solution is more elegant, sure. But performance doesn’t always have to be pretty.
AMD’s $299 Radeon HD 6950 looks a little more impressive as it bests the Radeon HD 5870 in all three resolutions, coming close to the $350 GeForce GTX 570 at 2560x1600.
You’ll notice that the results in this game vary a bit on the AMD boards from 1680x1050 to 2560x1600, too. The Radeon HD 5970, for example, seems particularly platform-constrained at the lower resolutions, coming into its own as the graphics workload intensifies. The same thing applies to the 6850s in CrossFire.
