![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Monday , July 14, 2008
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Google +1
AMD ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 Preview
We have an exclusive early look at AMD’s new ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 to be launched later this summer. We will take a look at the 4870 X2 in a CrossFireX configuration as well, and evaluate gameplay in Crysis and Age of Conan with several apples-to-apples tests. We think you’ll be pleasantly surprised to see 8X AA playable at 2560x1600 and 24X CFAA playable at 1920x1200.
Crysis
(DirectX 10)
We are using the full version of Crysis. Crysis is a first person shooter that is set in 2019. What makes Crysis unique is the amazing destructible environment and the on the fly customizability of your character and your weapons. Then there is always the graphics quality that will bring even the top end video cards to their knees. We will be playing Crysis in the default APIs for our system, which launches automatically in DX10 mode with the 64-bit executable. We have applied the latest hotfix patch version 1.2.1 for Crysis.
As you progress through Crysis the game becomes more graphically demanding; first the scenic vistas, then the weather effects, and finally the final boss all lead your optimized playable settings of the first few levels to become unplayable. Our run-through in the graphs below involves 10 minutes of gameplay in “Assault_Crysis” the Harbor map. This map includes the transition from night to day, tons of explosions, particles, physics, AI interaction and water.
Note that in the graphs, we have lowered our redline to 25 FPS for Crysis. This game is demanding, and low framerates are impossible to avoid, gameplay is also different in this game to where 25 FPS and up feels very playable (Very likely due to the efficient use of motion blur.). Note that the down-spikes to 0 FPS in the graphs are due to the saved game points.
Highest Playable Settings – 1920x1200
Crysis, as always, proves to be quite a burden for these video cards. Still, we experienced some very respectable performance with these video cards leading to an enjoyable gameplay experience. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 was able to handle 1920x1200 very well, allowing us to play with all in-game settings at “High.” The BFGTech GeForce GTX 280 OC also provided this same level of gameplay experience at 1920x1200 with everything on “High.” Neither video card allowed us to increase the AA setting to 2X at this resolution, or raise any other setting to “Very High.” We were quite literally at the threshold of playability at these settings. Crysis is very enjoyable at these settings, so they are nothing to gawk at. Any video card capable of rendering Crysis with all “High” settings at 1920x1200 is a very fast video card indeed.
It does get even better though once we configure a Radeon HD 4870 X2 CrossFireX or GeForce GTX 280 SLI configuration. At 1920x1200 we are now able to turn a few of the in-game settings up to “Very High” on the Radeon HD 4870 X2 CrossFireX configuration, and not only that, but we can also easily enable 4X AA now in the game! Yes, you are seeing it right; we are able to play Crysis at 1920x1200 with 4X AA enabled. The GeForce GTX 280 SLI also achieved this exact same level of antialiasing at 1920x1200. There is one difference though that is worth noting.
With the GeForce GTX 280 SLI configuration we were able to set Texture Quality on “Very High” here with no performance impact versus “High.” However, we did experience a negative performance impact enabling “Very High” textures on the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 configuration at these settings; therefore we had to leave it at “High.” I wouldn’t worry too much about this early performance behavior in Crysis however with CrossFireX, AMD has told us that they are not yet seeing the performance scaling they’d like to in Crysis with CrossFireX. Still, we are impressed by being able to play at 4X AA at 1920x1200 on both platforms. Now let’s move up to 2560x1600 and see what happens.
Highest Playable Settings – 2560x1600
2560x1600 in Crysis certainly taxes these video cards greatly. We were not able to run Crysis with “High” shaders with either the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 CrossFireX configuration or the GeForce GTX 280 SLI configuration. On both platforms the game was incredibly choppy with “High” shaders at 2560x1600, we are talking teens to single digits. It seems at 2560x1600, with this early driver set, scaling isn’t the best with the AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 CrossFireX platform. We had to set every in-game option to “Medium” just to eek out playable performance, while GTX 280 SLI played well with everything but shaders on “High.”
Like we said above, do not let this Crysis performance sway you negatively, because we think you will see on the next page that the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is here to dominate the competition.