Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 512MB Toxic
Test Setup and FutureMark 3DMark06 Benchmarks
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| Hardware: Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 (2.3GHz - Dual-Core) MSI P35 Platinum Combo (Intel P35 Express Chipset) 2x1GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 CL 6-6-6-15 - DDR-1300 Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Toxic 512MB GDDR4 ASUS GeForce 8800GTX 768MB GDDR3 Nvidia Geforce 8600 GTS 256MB GDDR3 MSI RX2600XT 512MB GDDR4 |
WD740 "Raptor" HD 10,000 RPM SATA Software: Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 Catalyst 8.3 NVIDIA Forceware 169.25 DirectX Redist (November 2007) Benchmarks Used: DirectX 3DMark06 v1.1.0 Crysis Company of Heroes Half-Life 2: Episode Two OpenGL Enemy Territory: Quake Wars |
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3DMark06 is the most recent addition to the 3DMark franchise. This version differs from 3Dmark05 in a number of ways, and includes not only Shader Model 2.0 tests, but Shader Model 3.0 and HDR tests as well. Some of the assets from 3DMark05 have been re-used, but the scenes are now rendered with much more geometric detail and the shader complexity is vastly increased as well. Max shader length in 3DMark05 was 96 instructions, while 3DMark06 ups that number to 512. 3DMark06 also employs much more lighting and there is extensive use of soft shadows. With 3DMark06, Futuremark has also updated how the final score is tabulated. In this latest version of the benchmark, SM 2.0 and HDR / SM3.0 tests are weighted and the CPU score is factored into the final tally as well. |
In the overall score, we saw the Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Toxic 512MB fall behind the 8800GTX by 557 points while with the Shader Model 2 and 3 tests, the card trailed by 440 and 295 points respectively. Overall, this is rather impressive considering the 8800GTX can cost twice that of a Radeon 3870.
