The Synthetic Benchmarks
We start off our round of benchmarks with the synthetic tests, and we start off the synthetic tests with a quick dip in the lake known as 3DMark06 Pro. This benchmark tests DirectX 9 performance, and is still going strong under Windows Vista and Windows 7.
Why still test DirectX 9? Well genius, there’s still plenty of DX9 based titles out there. Ever heard of Left 4 Dead or Team Fortress 2? They’re both DX9 titles. Can we move on now?
3DMark06 Professional
In my last video card review I had lamented the lack of performance increase when going from a single HD 4890 to two HD 4890 cards in CrossFire. That still holds true, but the ASUS HD 5850 provides a nice median between the two extremes. This card is 7% faster than a single HD 4890 while being only 7% slower than two 4890 cards, placing it right smack in the middle.
3DMark Vantage
Moving over to 3DMark Vantage, we get to see the CrossFire rig pull ahead a little in the performance numbers. As we move higher up in resolution and detail settings, the old CrossFire rig gets a further leg up on the single HD 5850. However the HD 5850 still maintains a solid lead over the old HD 4890.
The advantage starts to become clear when you start comparing prices between the two card HD 4890 configuration and the single HD 5850. This is a definite plus to the HD 5850. Owners of existing HD 4890s may still want to take advantage of a second card instead of upgrading because the rapidly dropping prices make them a better upgrade option.
The DirectX 9 Files
Since we used these benchmarks in our last video card review it only seemed suiting to continue with their use, if only as a point of comparison for the ASUS Radeon HD 5850. We lead off our round of benchmarks with Call of Duty 4. Though two sequels to this game have now been released, this title is still the most played amongst PC gamers. We also check out my personal favourite, Team Fortress 2.
Call of Duty 4
The ASUS Radeon HD 5850 seems to display a particular performance glitch we experienced with the DIAMOND card in CrossFire; there really isn’t much of a performance difference between the games. Tests were performed with Very High settings, and Vsync was double-checked to make sure it was disabled. This anomaly makes a quick judgment rather difficult.
Sure the HD 5850 performs well in CoD4, but so do all the other cards we’ve tested.
Team Fortress 2
Team Fortress 2 produced even weirder results, with our timedemo scoring the Radeon HD 5850 lower then the 4890, and much lower then the CrossFire configuration. I re-ran the timedemo I recorded from a match with the crazy kids from Penny Arcade Forums, and found the same results kept popping up. I even verified the settings used, and there was no change from when we last tested a video card.