Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 GDDR4 & HD 4830

What was the last first-person game on the PC to truly blow you away, or offer some unique gameplay experience? New first-person shooters come out quite often, and while some show off some new features and gameplay twists, few of them truly regenerate the genre like we’d hope. Mirror’s Edge is a title that strived to do just that, and for the most part, I’d have to say they’ve done a great job.

First and foremost, Mirror’s Edge isn’t so much a first-person shooter as it is a first-person adventure game, because for the most part, combat isn’t the main focus. Throughout some of the few levels I played through, at times there could be a full ten-minute span without even seeing a single person, which is actually somewhat refreshing. The game focuses on figuring out the best way to get from point A to point B, heavily utilizing the parkour style of travel.

Most levels in Mirror’s Edge offers a similar level of system-intensity, so I based our choice on one that was fun to play through, and one that allowed an easily-replicable run-through. It takes place in chapter six, “Pirandello Kruger”, and Checkpoint A. We begin in a large building, behind a window, looking out at the city. Our run-through takes us outside of this building, down to the street and up to the top of the building shown to the right in the above screenshot.

In this particular title, 40 FPS is ideal for smooth gameplay, but anything between 30-40 would considered playable by most standards. In a game where you have an open world like this, and you need absolutely quick reflexes to pull off a few maneuvers, having as many FPS at your disposal as possible is a good thing. That said, the HD 4830 could handle the game just fine at 1920×1200, while the HD 4670 runs much better at 1680×1050… at least with anti-aliasing enabled.

Although the performance on the HD 4830 was a tad on the slower side at 2560×1600, gameplay felt quite reasonable in my tests (which expanded beyond our testing level). 1920×1200 on that card would be a much better experience, but the performance was still “good enough” at 2560×1600 to be fully playable. On the HD 4670 side of things, 1920×1200 was the best we could do, sans AA, which delivered a very respectable 39 FPS.