Sapphire HD4870 Toxic Video Card Review

We did some more testing with other popular PC video games.  Here are the results, along with our comments about the game and test.   Wherever possible, we watched a timedemo and noted the minimum, average, and high FPS (frames per second).  A particular high or dip was not counted unless it lingered for more than an instant.  Therefore, a ridiculously high frame rate when there are no enemies on the screen or complex scenery was not included.  We are looking for numbers that translate into real-world gameplay.

Lego Batman 1900×1200

Lego Batman may not sound like a game that has high graphics expectations, but the complexity of these games has grown with Lego Indiana Jones, and again with Lego Batman.  The same engine may be in use, but the developers have added more complex lighting and transparency effects.  We included Lego Batman to demonstrate how the cards scale with different resolutions with and without in-game anti-aliasing.  It is good to see that you can run the game at extremely high resolutions with full Edge anti-aliasing and still have very playable framerates.

Lego Batman 1280×720

It can be easily seen that the HD 4870 trumps other single-card solutions in this setup.

Codemasters Race Driver Grid

Codemaster’s Grid is probably one of the best-looking racing games today.  Everything looks very realistic, from the cars, to the scenery and the crowds.  The engine is demanding, but not impossibly finicky like Crysis.  We tested this game with in-game 2X anti-aliasing, and achieved very playable framerates, even at extremely high 1900×1200 resolution

Again, the HD 4870 Toxic has a much higher average FPS than other single-card solutions.  The GTX 280 comes close, but not close enough.

Call of Duty 4 Benchmarks

Call of Duty 4’s engine is probably the best example of what a Crossfire or SLI setup can do for you.  The engine is very responsive to multi-GPUs and multi-core CPUs.  The numbers show how the framerate’s skyrocket linearly as you stack on more processing power.  If you crave high framerates in CoD, then you totally need a multi-GPU setup.

For some reason, the GTX 280 does better in this test.  This game also does extremely well with multi-GPU cards, as well.  The 4850 X2 (reviewed here) is easily faster than the GTX 280 and 4870 Toxic, but is not included in this benchmark because it is not a single-GPU solution.

Crysis Warhead Benchmark

Crysis is THE engine that sucks as much horsepower as you can throw at it.  The engine features many advanced features like motion blur and many other features that are demanding to produce in real-time.  Currently the only way to consistently see over 30 frames per second in this game is to have the latest hardware, which translates into a computer that costs a few thousand dollars.

For some reason, Crysis loves nVidia video cards.  Again, this is a video engine that does not take advantage of multi-GPU cards, so SLI or Crossfire-enabled boards will not get you any higher FPSes.  Crysis is very playable with the 4870, but the GTX manages to squeeze out a few extra frames.