PowerColor HD4870 512MB PCI-E
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 the GTX260 taking a ~3fps advantage over the 4870 at 1900×1200 and 1280×1024 resolutions, but the lower price of the PowerColor HD4870 giving it a slight advantage on the CPF scale, there really is no clear winner in the Crysis benchmarks.
As expected the GTX280 gives the best benchmark results at all resolutions, but with a £7.86 per frame price tag attached to the card, are the extra few fps it produces really worth it?
F.E.A.R. is a game based on the Lithtech Jupiter EX engine. It has volumetric lighting, soft shadows, parallax mapping and particle effects. 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.
Once again the HD4870 can’t quite keep up with the GTX260, falling 16fps behind at 1900×1200 and 19fps behind at 1280×1024. Even when running at overclocked settings the 4870 can’t quite manage to close the gap, leaving both the GTX260 and 4870 with almost even scores on the CPF scale.
