AMD Radeon HD 6870 & HD 6850 in CrossFireX

Of all the games we test, it might be this one that needs no introduction. Back in 1998, Blizzard unleashed what was soon to be one of the most successful RTS titles on the planet, and even as of today, the original is still heavily played all around the world – even in actual competitions. StarCraft II of course had a lot of hype to live up to, and it did, thanks to its intense gameplay and superb graphics.

Manual Run-through: The portion of the game we use for testing is part of the Zero Hour mission, which has us holding fort until we’re able to evacuate. Our saved game starts us in the middle of the mission, and from the get-go, we build a couple of buildings and concurrently move our main units up and around the map. Total playtime lasts about two minutes.

It’s clear that StarCraft II loves NVIDIA cards, as the GTX 480 kept up quite close to the CrossFireX’d HD 6870s. In the end, all of our single card configurations handled the game just fine even at 2560×1600. This is a game where ~30 FPS is playable, so anything more than that, and you’re golden.

If you wish to do so (and I recommend it), you can force anti-aliasing through the AMD control center and still get some great performance. I run the game without it in our tests simply due to the fact that it’s not a native option found inside of the game, and there’s too great a chance of mixed results between vendors.