Sapphire HD4870 512mb DDR5
3DMark is a popular synthetic gaming benchmark used by many gamers and overclockers to gauge the performance of their PC’s. All 3DMark runs were performed a total of 5 times, with the highest and lowest results being removed and an average calculated from the remaining 3 results.
As was to be expected, the Sapphire and Powercolour cards give the same results, both bettering the GTX260 and not too far behind the NVidia flagship model GTX280.
Again we see the Sapphire card matching that of the Powercolour but this time the GTX260 takes a slight advantage over the ATI counterparts. The results however are a little closer once the resolution is increased and AA applied.
Finally we arrive at Futuremark’s latest benchmark. The 4870’s struggle to keep up with their NVidia rivals here and considering that the PhysX driver was not used in this run, one can only assume that the gap would increase further. For a card costing apx £40 less though it is a very good showing from ATI. I was especially pleased to see that when adding AA the card didn’t appear to be crippled as with the 3870 series. So far so good!
