Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X

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.

ATI cards tend to excel at Bound in Blood, so it’s no surprise to see the HD 5870 do well here. But, it exceeded expectations, soaring past the dual-GPU GTX 295, even at the top-end resolution of 2560×1600.

Despite the fact that CoJ: Bound in Blood has fantastic graphics, it doesn’t require a powerhouse machine like certain other titles do (Crysis) to look good, and as a result, running the game with 4xAA at our top-end resolution of 2560×1600 delivered outstanding performance.