Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X

The Call of Duty series is one that needs no introduction. Although only six years old, CoD has already become a stature where both single-player and multi-player first-person shooters are concerned. From the series’ inception, each game has delivered stellar gameplay that totally engrosses you, thanks in part to creative levels, smart AI and realistic graphics.

World at War is officially the 5th game in the series, and while some hardcore fans claim that Treyarch is simply unable to deliver as high caliber a game as Infinity Ward, the title does do well to hold everyone over until Modern Warfare 2 hits (November 10, 2009). One perk is that World at War focuses on battles not exhausted in other war games, which helps to keep things fresh.

Manual Run-through: The level chosen for our testing is “Relentless”, one that depicts the Battle of Peleliu, which has American soldiers advance to capture an airstrip from the Japanese. The level is both exciting to play and incredibly hard on your graphics hardware, making it a perfect choice for our testing.

Except where the dual-GPU GeForce GTX 295 is concerned, the HD 5870 is the undeniable champion, with the Vapor-X boosting the performance up a smidgen overall compared to the reference card.

As gorgeous as World at War may be, it runs absolutely flawlessly at our maxed settings with 4x anti-aliasing. Aside from the GTX 295, the HD 5870 Vapor-X is the first card we’ve tested to break the 50FPS barrier, although the reference-clocked version comes incredibly close.