Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 Toxic

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The first two titles might have been built on the already-outdated Quake III engine, but since then, the games have been built with improved graphical features, capable of pushing the highest-end PCs out there.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.

The performance gains seen here, I assume, must be a combination of both the pre-overclock, and also driver improvements that have been made since we originally reviewed the reference-clocked HD 5850. A simple 40MHz Core boost isn’t likely to cause a 6FPS increase, although the faster memory speed may play a role as well.

When we’re seeing an average of 75 FPS at the game’s maxed-out settings, who on earth would want to lower them? Not us, so our top settings above of course become our best playable.