Gigabyte 4850 1GB

 
Crysis is without doubt one of the most visually stunning and hardware-challenging games to date. By using CrysisBench – a tool developed independently of Crysis – we performed a total of 5 timedemo benchmarks using a GPU-intensive pre-recorded demo. To ensure the most accurate results, the highest and lowest benchmark scores were then removed and an average calculated from the remaining three.
 

 

Ubisoft has developed a new engine specifically for Far Cry 2, called Dunia, meaning “world”, “earth” or “living” in Parsi. The engine takes advantage of multi-core processors as well as multiple processors and supports DirectX 9 as well as DirectX 10. Running the Far Cry 2 benchmark tool the test was run 5 times with the highest and lowest scores being omitted and the average calculated from the remaining 3.

ET:Quake Wars

ET:Quake Wars is a follow-up game to Wolfenstein:Enemy Territory developed by Splash Technology. Using a modified version of id Software’s Doom 3 engine along with Mega rendering technology, the game promises high resolution textures, fast gameplay and plenty of explosions. Using the built-in recordNetDemo and timeNetDemo commands, we recorded a 5 minute online gaming session and played it back a total of 5 times at each resolution, calculating the average FPS from the median three results.

Results Analysis
 

Once again the 4670 and 4850 run rings around the 260 and 4870 where cost per frame is concerned. Performance is also far from unacceptable, with the 4850 matching the 260 in Crysis, which is simple fantastic for a card that costs £50 less. Far Cry 2 is the only game where the 4850 looks a bit weak, with a frame count quite  a lot lower. However, looking at the CPF shows this is still a good result, as the card still provides far more bang per buck than the GTX260.