ASUS ENGTX260 TOP 896MB (NVIDIA GTX260)

 

Call of Duty 4 is a stunning DirectX 9.0c based game that really looks awesome and has a very full feature set. With lots of advanced lighting, smoke and water effects, the game has excellent explosions along with fast gameplay. Using the in-built Call Of Duty features, a 10-minute long gameplay demo was recorded and replayed on each of the GPU’s using the /timedemo command a total of 5 times. The highest and lowest FPS results were then removed, with an average being calculated from the remaining 3 results.

 

 

 

Sitting just 6-7FPS behind the GTX280 at both 1280×1024 and 1900×1200 resolutions, the factory overclocked ASUS ENGTX260 certainly puts out some decent numbers. This also converts well to the CPF scale, with the ENGTX260 being over £2.00 cheaper than the GTX280 at 1900×1200 and £1.69 cheaper at 1280×1024.

 

Over on the red team, ATI’s mid-range HD4850 may not be able to compete in the performance stakes, falling roughly 30FPS behind at both resolutions, but it certainly gives the best value out of all the cards on test, including the dual-GPU versions of its predecessors.

 

 

 

BioShock is a recent FPS shooter by 2K games. Based on the UT3 engine, it has a large amount of advanced DirectX techniques including excellent water rendering and superb lighting and smoke techniques. All results were recorded using F.R.A.P.S with a total of 5 identical runs through the same area of the game. The highest and lowest results were then removed, with an average being calculated from the remaining 3 results.

 

 

 

BIOSHOCK mixes things up a bit, with only a few FPS between the HD4850 and the GTX260 at 1900×1200. The GTX280 and 9800GX2 take the top two performance spots here, but their high prices don’t bode very well on the CPF scale. Once again, the GTX260 offers much better value than the GTX280, costing almost £2.00 less per frame at 1900×1200, but the HD4850 represents the best value, costing just £1.03 per frame at 1280×1024.