by Rob Williams on December 16, 2009 in Graphics & Displays
Of all the current mid-range graphics cards on the market, the Radeon HD 5770 from AMD has proven to be one of the best. It offers great performance, and has other perks such as DirectX 11 and Eyefinity support. With its Vapor-X model, Sapphire has improved the card in numerous ways, including power consumption and temperatures.
I admit that I’m not a huge fan of RTS titles, but World in Conflict intrigued me from the get go. After all, so many war-based games continue to follow the same story-lines we already know, and WiC was different. It counteracts the fall of the political and economic situation in the Soviet Union in the late 80’s, and instead provides a storyline that follows it as if the USSR had succeeded by proceeding with war in order to remain in power.
Many RTS games, with their advanced AI, tend to favor the CPU in order to deliver smooth gameplay, but WiC favors both the CPU and GPU, and the graphics prove it. Throughout the game’s missions, you’ll see gorgeous vistas and explore areas from deserts and snow-packed lands, to fields and cities. Overall, it’s a real visual treat for the eyes – especially since you’re able to zoom to the ground and see the action up-close.
Manual Run-through: The level we use for testing is the 7th campaign of the game, called Insurgents. Our saved game plants us towards the beginning of the mission with two squads of five, and two snipers. The run consists of bringing our men to action, and hovering the camera around throughout the duration. The entire run lasts between three and four minutes.
We wrap up our game results exactly as we expected… with both the Vapor-X and reference card neck-and-neck.
|
|
|
|
NVIDIA GTX 295 1792MB (Reference)
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xAA, 16xAF
|
40
|
55.819
|
ATI HD 5870 1GB (Reference)
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
|
35
|
47.195
|
ATI HD 5850 1GB (ASUS)
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
|
29
|
40.581
|
NVIDIA GTX 285 1GB (EVGA)
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 16xAF
|
34
|
49.514
|
NVIDIA GTX 275 896MB (Reference)
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 16xAF
|
36
|
46.186
|
ATI HD 4890 1GB (Sapphire)
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 16xAF
|
31
|
46.175
|
ATI HD 4870 1GB (Reference)
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 16xAF
|
28
|
40.660
|
NVIDIA GTX 260 896MB (XFX)
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 16xAF
|
23
|
39.365
|
ATI HD 5770 1GB (Vapor-X)
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 16xAF
|
28
|
37.511
|
ATI HD 5770 1GB (Reference)
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 16xAF
|
28
|
37.389
|
NVIDIA GTX 250 1GB (EVGA)
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 4xAF
|
24
|
32.453
|
ATI HD 5750 1GB (Sapphire)
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 4xAF
|
23
|
31.769
|
Like the reference card, this game ran much better with no anti-aliasing with the Vapor-X card.