NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 – GF100 Has Landed

When the original Call of Duty game launched in 2003, Infinity Ward was an unknown. Naturally… it was the company’s first title. But since then, the series and company alike have become household names. Not only has the series delivered consistently incredible gameplay, it’s pushed the graphics envelope with each successive release, and where Modern Warfare is concerned, it’s also had a rich storyline.

The first two titles might have been built on the already-outdated Quake III engine, but since then, the games have been built with improved graphical features, capable of pushing the highest-end PCs out there. Modern Warfare 2 is the first such exception, as it’s more of a console port than a true PC title. Therefore, the game doesn’t push PC hardware as much as we’d like to see, but despite that, it still looks great, and lacks little in the graphics department. You can read our review of the game here.

Manual Run-through: The level chosen is the 10th mission in the game, “The Gulag”. Our teams fly in helicopters up to an old prison with the intention of getting closer to finding the game’s villain, Vladimir Makarov. Our saved game file begins us at the point when the level name comes on the screen, right before we reach the prison, and it ends after one minute of landing, following the normal progression of the level. The entire run takes around two-and-a-half minutes.

NVIDIA’s GTX 480 kicks off to a good start here, but the HD 5870 sure isn’t far behind. As has become a relative theme, the “bigger” differences are seen at lower resolutions, only because the raw numbers are much higher. At 2560×1600, the difference is almost nil.

Modern Warfare 2 looks quite good on the PC, but given that it’s a console port, it doesn’t begin to stress our graphics cards half as much as we’d like. So, not surprisingly, NVIDIA’s latest card handles the game at maxed-out settings and resolution.