Radeon HD 4800: PCGH Benchmark Review

Not before yesterday we received our sample of the Radeon HD 4870. Since then we rushed the card through test after test to produce an appropriate benchmark review. We will deliver additional benchmarks and a performance index soon.

For this review we used benchmarks similar to those of our Geforce GTX 280 review. The Radeon HD 4870 has to show its capabilities in several games and synthetically benchmarks. Among them: 3DMark 06 and Vantage, Bioshock, Crysis, Call of Duty 4, World in Conflict and UT3. Some older games were tuned with mods to make them fit the current visual requirements.

According to the target group of high-end gamers we chose our hardware and the resolutions. Normally we start our tests with widespread resolution of 1,680x1,050 with 4x FSAA and 16:1 AF - the same is done with a 24 inch LCD with a resolution of 1,920x1,200 and finally the premium class 2,560x1,600 - all of them are additionally checked, according to the application, with 8x FSAA, a setting known to cause problems with the Geforce cards up to now. As long as nothing else is indicated, the real 8x MSAA aka 8xQ mode is in use.

Call of Duty 4 and Unreal Tournament 3, two of the most popular games, were tested with several additional graphics cards. Thus you can see where your own card is placed in comparison against AMD's latest model.

Our test system was equipped with an overclocked Dual Core CPU, since we thought this to be more appropriate and realistic than an overclocked Quad Core for more than 1,000 Euros (ca. 1,500 US-Dollar). Windows Vista x64 and 4 GiByte RAM take care of the data handling.

Test system and configuration
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 3.600 MHz (400x9)
Board: Asus P5N-D (Nforce 750i SLI chipset)
RAM: 4x 1.024 MiByte DDR2-800 (5-5-5-15)
OS: Windows Vista 64 Bit with SP1

• Forceware/Geforce 177.34 (HQ)
• Catalyst 8.5 respectively 8.6 for HD 4800 (AI def.)

VGA:
• Geforce GTX 280, 1.024 MiB GDDR3, 602/1.296/1.107 MHz
• Geforce GTX 260, 896 MiB GDDR3, 576/1.242/999 MHz
• Geforce 9800 GX2, 2 x 512 MiB GDDR3, 600/1.512/1.000 MHz
• Geforce 8800 Ultra, 768 MiB GDDR3, 612/1.512/1.080 MHz
• Geforce 9800 GTX+, 512 MiB GDDR3, 738/1.836/1.100 MHz
• Geforce 9800 GTX, 512 MiB GDDR3, 675/1.674/1.100 MHz

• Radeon HD 4870, 512 MiB GDDR5, 750/1.800 MHz
• Radeon HD 4850, 512 MiB GDDR3, 625/993 MHz
• Radeon HD 3870 X2, 2 x 512 MiB GDDR3, 825/901 MHz
• Radeon HD 3870, 512 MiB GDDR4, 776/1.125 MHz

As always we use the high quality settings of the Nvidia driver for all the Geforce cards. With AMD's Radeon models we stick to the Catalyst A.I. default settings, because else bugfixes and the application specific optimizations wouldn't take effect.