ATI Radeon HD 4850 and 4870: RV770 Has Arrived
|
|
|
|
|
The latest version of Futuremark's synthetic 3D gaming benchmark, 3DMark Vantage, is specifically bound to Windows Vista-based systems because it uses some advanced visual technologies that are only available with DirectX 10, which y isn't available on previous versions of Windows. 3DMark Vantage isn't simply a port of 3DMark06 to DirectX 10 though. With this latest version of the benchmark, Futuremark has incorporated two new graphics tests, two new CPU tests, several new feature tests, in addition to support for the latest PC hardware. We tested the graphics cards here with 3DMark Vantage's Extreme preset option, which uses a resolution of 1,920 x 1,200, with 4X anti-aliasing and 16X anisotropic filtering. |
The relatively new 3DMark Vantage is far more intensive than the aging 3DMark06, and as such the spread is far more pronounced between the different configurations we tested. Here, the Radeon HD 4850 edges out the upcoming GeForce 9800 GTX+ by a few points and the Radeon HD 4870 finishes just behind the GeForce GTX 260.
3DMark Vantage's individual GPU tests tell essentially the same story, although in GPU test 2 the Radeon HD 4850 finishes just behind the GeForce 9800 GTX+. The Radeon HD 4850's slightly larger margin if victory over the GTX+ in GPU test 1, however, gave it the overall edge in this benchmark. We should also note that both NVIDIA's and ATI's solutions show excellent multi-GPU scaling in 3DMark Vantage with the exception of the quad-CrossFireX 3870 X2 setup, which suffered from visual anomalies and lower than expected scores.
