ASUS HD 4870 X2 (EAH4870X2) 2GB PCI-E
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 game play 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.
Quite often in GPU reviews we find ourselves discussing the performance figures of two cards only a few FPS apart. However, with the 4870X2 managing to pump out almost 80FPS more than the GTX280 at 1280×1024 and 60FPS at 1900×1200, there’s not really much to be said other than wow!
This of course also translates well when placed on the CPF (Cost Per Frame) scale. Despite the higher price of the 4870X2 at present, the performance of the card easily ofsets this, bringing the card in at almost £1 cheaper than the GTX280 when running at 1900×1200.
Crysis is without doubt one of the most visually stunning and hardware-challenging games to date. By using CrysisBench – a tool developed independently of Crysis – we performed a total of 5 timedemo benchmarks using a GPU-intensive pre-recorded demo. To ensure the most accurate results, the highest and lowest benchmark scores were then removed and an average calculated from the remaining three.
With Very High graphics detail and 4xAA selected, we wanted to make sure that both the GTX280 and the 4870X2 were given a thorough thrashing. As we can see from the results above, both cards buckled under the pressure, neither being able to keep up any playable FPS score. However, with the 4870X2 sitting around 15FPS ahead of the GTX280 across all resolutions, it was certainly the most playable of the two.
The CPF scale is almost painful to look at when it comes to Crysis results with prices running into the double figures per frame. However, despite the 4870X2 costing an eyewatering £11.26 per frame at 1900×1200, it was still a full £6 cheaper than the GTX280 which came in at a stomach turning £17.45 a frame!
