First GPU Review Under New Methodology Posted

Last month, I posted that we were working on upgrading all of our performance-related methodologies, and I’m happy to report that we pretty much finished towards the end of September. It took almost two straight weeks, but we feel the results are going to be worth it. We took the opportunity to re-evaluate everything, from how we go about installing Windows (and tweaking it for reliability), which applications to use for testing, finding the best test for each, et cetera.

Content that received these overhauls include processors (we’ll kick off the new methodology there with the Core i7 965), graphics cards, motherboards and storage. The first review to be posted with the revamp is of Palit’s Radeon HD 4870 Sonic Dual Edition, which you might have noticed at the top of the page. I’ll give a quick rundown of what exactly we’ve changed here or improved here.

The first and most notable is the addition of “best playable” settings on the bottom of each game page. Along with our regular graphs showing a GPUs scalability at a given resolution, these “best playable” tables are completely separate and are a simple way to see what we feel was the best playable setting for that particular card. In the case of the card mentioned above and Crysis Warhead, we found 2560×1600 on the Mainstream profile to be the best setting possible, delivering close to 35 FPS. Even if you don’t run that resolution, it can show the capabilities of the GPU, and you can remain confident that if the card is capable of that, then it’s going to only improve at any lower resolution.

Other new features include temperature reports and also revised power consumption and overclocking tests. Minor updates this time around include replacing the original Crysis with Crysis Warhead, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky – both two very GPU-intensive games in every sense of the word. We of course welcome thoughts on our new methodology, so if you have any questions or comments, please take a look at the review and post your comment in our related thread, which doesn’t require a registration.

You can expect more good things to come in the weeks to come, so definitely stay tuned.

Let’s face it. The overclock available with a flick of the switch on this Sonic card is small, and the differences in real-world tests are minimal. What makes this card so great is the general performance we’ve come to appreciate, along with the features and cooler. It’s all made better by the fact that despite the additions, the card is still priced less than most of the competition.

Source: Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic Dual Edition Review