Real-world benchmarks

Now we move on to a far more important topic - Real-world game testing.  Here, we put the Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 through its paces under Windows Vista in no less than nine current game titles.  For a board of this level, we will be focusing our testing firstly at the broad target resolution of 1920x1200, followed by some far more GPU intensive rendering at 2560x1600 for you 30" LCD owners out there to stress the board more fully.  This will be tested first without any anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering, followed by testing with 4x AA and 16x AF enabled to make use of some of the extra eye candy on offer with this part.

So, now you know what we're up to, let's crack straight on with our results!

Call of Duty 4

After storming its way into the top ten best-seller list for the PC in 2007, Call of Duty 4 is a well deserved (and not to mention great looking) addition to our benchmarking suite.  We test here using a manual run through of a section of the game's first act using FRAPS, and with all in-game details set to their highest levels.

Starting out at 1920x1200, the Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 builds an impressive lead against the GeForce GTX 280 - While both boards offer fantastic performance, AMD's offering steams well ahead.

Adding anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering at this resolution allows the Sapphire card to enjoy an even greater performance advantage as the extra rendering workload barely causes it to break stride at all, continuing to offer a three figure average frame rate.

This remains the case at 2560x1600 - Again, performance overall is playable on both cards, but it's the Radeon HD 4850 X2 that rules the roost.

This performance advantage really shows at our highest test settings - While the GeForce GTX 280 slips below a sixty frames per second average, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 continues to offer excellent performance to keep this title entirely playable on our dual GPU offering.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is the latest title to make use of id Software's Doom 3 engine, while also integrating into it another of John Carmack's creations - MegaTexture.  The principle of MegaTexture is to enable developers to use massive textures to create realistic looking landscapes without hugely impacting graphics performance, a noble cause which appears to work pretty well in this title, bringing large outdoor arenas to the Doom 3 engine for the first time.  We test this title with all graphical details set to their highest levels.

At 1920x1200, we're basically CPU limited in this title, a scenario which will always favour a single GPU over a CrossFire configuration due to the additional CPU and driver overhead of feeding two graphics chips in tandem.  Regardless of this, both cards offer great frame rates here.

There isn't much in it, but the GeForce GTX 280 manages to hold its lead with 4x anti-aliasing and 16x anisotropy enabled, to hold up that old adage about NVIDIA having better OpenGL drivers once again.

Moving up to 2560x1600, NVIDIA's offering carries a 6.6% performance advantage, although once again performance is still playable on the Sapphire board.

Both parts drop below sixty frames per second at 2560x1600 with all the other goodies enabled, although this particular configuration does finally allow the Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 to have its day in the sun in this title, leading the way by a little over 5%.