AMD Radeon HD 6870 & HD 6850

Just Cause 2 might not belong to a well-established series of games, but with its launch, it looks like that might not be the case for long. The game offers not only superb graphics, but an enormous world to explore, and for people like me, a countless number of hidden items to find around it. During the game, you’ll be scaling skyscrapers, racing through jungles and fighting atop snow-drenched mountains. What’s not to like?

Manual Run-through: The level chosen here is part of the second mission in the game, “Casino Bust”. Our runthrough begins at the second-half of the level, which requires us to situate ourselves on top of a car and have our driver, Karl Blaine, speed us through part of the island to safety. This is a great mission for benchmarking as we get to see a lot of the landmass, even if some of it is at a distance.

Continuing our theme from the last game, Just Cause 2 also seems to favor AMD’s Radeons, and as such, the performance crown goes to them.

Unlike Dirt 2, where maxed-out graphic detail will work on a lot of recent configurations, that’s not the case here. The only exception is on the HD 5870, and even that’s cutting it close. On our HD 6870, we had to cut down on the water and objects detail just a tad, while also disabling AA, and for the HD 6850, we decreased the detail even further, completely disabling high-res shadows and ambient occlusion.