Asus HD4850 512mb PCI-E Graphics Card EAH4850
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.
Call of Duty 4 shows that there is some truth in the 3DMark05/06 results over the previous page, with the HD4850 managing to beat out the 9800GTX card at high resolutions, but falling slightly short at 1280×1024. The insanely low price of the card more than makes up for this though, with the HD4850 being over £0.60 cheaper per fps at 1280×1024 and £0.78 cheaper at 1900×1200.
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.
The results from Call of Duty 4 are further amplified in the BIOSHOCK tests, with the 9800GTX beating out the HD4850 by around 20FPS at 1280×1024 and the results swinging back in favour of the HD4850 at 1900×1200. Interestingly, the HD4850 manages to beat out both of its dual-GPU predecessors (the 3870×2 and 3850×2) by quite a significant margin.
Yet again the HD4850 is the best buy, being over £1.00 cheaper per frame than the 9800GTX at 1900×1200 and £0.14 cheaper at 1280×1024.
