Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X

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.

The performance shown above isn’t too much of a surprise given the ongoing theme, but surprisingly, the GTX 295 truly excels here, likely thanks to the fact that it has near 2GB worth of GDDR to deal with, as performance-wise, the HD 5870 should theoretically beat it.

In another first, the HD 5870 is the first single-GPU card to pass our grade at the game’s top settings with 4xAA. The GTX 295 managed 8xAA with an even higher average FPS, but that card still remains a poor choice at current time for various reasons (namely, the price, at $500).