by Rob Williams on February 19, 2010 in Graphics & Displays
AMD’s Radeon HD 5850 may not be the company’s highest-end card, but it still packs a wicked punch. Plus, when overclocked, and overclocked well, it can come close to the peformance of the top-end HD 5870. With the design of Sapphire’s Toxic graphics card, hitting heights like this seem to be made all too simple.
When the original Call of Juarez was released, it brought forth something unique… a western-styled first-person shooter. That’s simply not something we see too often, so for fans of the genre, its release was a real treat. Although it didn’t really offer the best gameplay we’ve seen from a recent FPS title, its storyline and unique style made it well-worth testing.
After we retired the original title from our suite, we anxiously awaited for the sequel, Bound in Blood, in hopes that the series could be re-introduced into our testing once again. Thankfully, it could, thanks in part to its fantastic graphics, which are based around the Chrome Engine 4, and improved gameplay of the original. It was also well-received by game reviewers, which is always a good sign.
Manual Run-through: The level chosen here is Chapter I, and our starting point is about 15 minutes into the mission, where we stand atop a hill that overlooks a large river. We make our way across the hill and ultimately through a large trench, and we stop our benchmarking run shortly after we blow up a gas-filled barrel.
Once again, and not surprisingly, the Toxic version of the HD 5850 places comfortably above the reference-clocked version.
|
|
|
|
ATI HD 5770 1GB CrossFireX
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail
|
59
|
87.583
|
ATI HD 5870 1GB (Reference)
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail
|
58
|
81.945
|
NVIDIA GTX 295 1792MB (Reference)
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail
|
37
|
80.339
|
ATI HD 5850 1GB (Sapphire Toxic)
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail
|
50
|
72.753
|
ATI HD 5850 1GB (ASUS)
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail
|
51
|
69.165
|
NVIDIA GTX 285 1GB (EVGA)
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail
|
45
|
54.428
|
NVIDIA GTX 275 896MB (Reference)
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail
|
41
|
51.393
|
ATI HD 5770 1GB (Reference)
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail
|
28
|
45.028
|
NVIDIA GTX 260 896MB (XFX)
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail
|
35
|
44.023
|
ATI HD 5750 1GB (Sapphire)
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail
|
27
|
38.686
|
NVIDIA GTX 250 1GB (EVGA)
|
2560×1600 – Max Detail
|
25
|
33.751
|
ATI HD 5670 512MB (Reference)
|
1920×1080 – Max Detail
|
38
|
47.23
|
NVIDIA GT 240 512MB (ASUS)
|
1920×1080 – Max Detail
|
29
|
39.446
|
ATI HD 5570 1GB (Sapphire)
|
1920×1080 – Max Detail
|
24
|
32.931
|
Is this much of a surprise? The game ran like a dream at the game’s top settings, so that becomes our “best playable” without a second thought.