ATI 5000 Series Roundup
Modern Warfare 2 & Crysis Warhead
Published: 20th January 2010 | Source: ASUS | Price: £117 - £540 |
Gaming Results Part 1 - First Person
As we recently documented within these pages we've made some changes to the games we're going to be using, and so from the excellent Modern Warfare, we move on to Modern Warfare 2. As with all of our tests today we're going to be running at 1920x1200 with the maximum settings available in game. As Modern Warfare 2 is designed with good gameplay on consoles as a vital component we're lucky because us PC gamers can really crank the image quality up high and still very playable frame-rates.
This is clearly demonstrated in our graph. Even with 8xAA only the stock 5770 is incapable of supplying 60fps average, but it can do it with the overclock the ASUS voltage BIOS allows. However as soon as we move into cards we'd expect to be used for gaming the Infinity Ward game gets quickly chewed up and spat out. A stock 5850 providing nearly 100fps average and not dropping below the magical 60fps barrier is only the beginning. Our Crossfire 5870 setup giving mind blowing frame-rates at a level that makes the 5970, even overclocked, look a bit wheezy.
Crysis eh. When it was first released the general opinion was that the graphics were lush, the gameplay pretty ropey, and it needs some mythical future computer to be able to run. Well, here we are with a 3.6GHz i7 Extreme and more graphical horsepower than could have been dreamt about a year ago. How does it fair?
Not well. We had to leave the anti-aliasing off entirely to stop the 5770 grinding to a halt, and although we wondered if the power of the other card might necessitate two runs using different settings we can see that even the 5870 Crossfire setup doesn't hit 60fps. Thankfully an overclocked 5850 provides a sufficient average frame-rate to give a smooth gaming experience, but the dependence of the Crytek engine on Physx, plus some pretty shoddy optimisation, means that nothing yet can give us that 60fps we need.
Ok so we've killed a few people, let's put the pedal to the metal.
Most Recent Comments
Finally, who gives a fig if a synthetic "my wedding tackle is so tiny I need to compensate with a big score" benchmark doesn't look great when the actual gaming results are so great?
Top review tom.|
Originally Posted by name='biscuitboy'
So perhaps the Best advice for someone with around the £300 mark to spend is buy a 5870 and then buy another when u have the money and need the performance increase?!
Top review tom. |
Indeed a good review guys|
Originally Posted by name='tinytomlogan'
Thats exactly it mate really, the 5870 is the daddy and is my own personal choice of GPU.
|
|
Originally Posted by name='killablade'
Atleast untill nvidia releases their cards
|
I'm curious as to why the 5670 wasn't included..
|
Originally Posted by name='Makol'
I'm pretty much sold on getting a 5770 when I have the money for it. Hopefully the price goes down once Nvidia releases their new cards.
I'm curious as to why the 5670 wasn't included.. |
|
Originally Posted by name='tinytomlogan'
Because we didnt have an Asus one to hand dude. And the review was about the main 4 gaming cards.
|
and I think you asked something about your lighting in one of your videos, it's fine.
8)
|
Originally Posted by name='ppuff'
Excellent review! Having all this head to head competition on the same graph makes picking a card easier for me. But it seems I have forgotten to water my money tree because it is not growing anything yet.
|
|
Originally Posted by name='Makol'
I'm curious as to why the 5670 wasn't included.. |
|
Originally Posted by name='clone38'
Just crossifed 2 5870s and im loving it so far
|
Very niceSomething tells me the green camp pump enough TWIMTBP funding to game devs to get just enough PhysX and tesselation into the games to keep them playable on ATI cards but little better and probably a little drab, while playing on their own GPGPU orientated cards will make the game as look as intimidating as 3-D pr0n on IMAX.
/rinses brain out with Ajax
//shows self to the door
How was the image quality in the Crossfire setups ? any microstuttering apparent during the gameplay ?
Sorry for bad english
|
Originally Posted by name='Pipari665'
Hi, I noticed that you prefer keeping your icons at the top of the desktop? If so, I`ll recommend using objectdock, keeps the essential icons hidden!
Sorry for bad english |
Awesome review, I'm glad I took the time to read it over. Perhaps I'll be in the market for a HD5870 afterall.
Cheers!
K.
CSS Valid
Continue Reading