Asus Matrix Radeon HD 5870 Graphics Card Review

How we tested

As always, we did our best to deliver a clean set of benchmarks, with each test repeated three times and an average of those results is what we’re reporting here. In the rare case where performance was inconsistent, we continued repeating the test until we got three results that were consistent.

The tests performed are a mixture of custom in-game timedemos and manually played sections, using FRAPS to record the average and minimum frame rates. We strive to not only record real-world performance you will actually see, but also present the results in a manner that is easy to digest.

Intel Core i7 Test System

• Intel Core i7-965 processor (3.2GHz: 133MHz x 24)
  
• Asus P6T V2 motherboard (Intel X58 Express with three PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots)
  
• 3x 2GB Corsair TR3X6G1333C9 memory modules (operating in dual channel at DDR3 1,600MHz 9-9-9-24-1T)
  
• Corsair X128 120GB SSD running v1 firmware
  
• Corsair HX1000W PSU
  
• Windows 7 Home Premium x64
  
• Antec Twelve Hundred Chassis

ATI graphics cards

• Asus Matrix HD 5870 2GB (894MHz GPU, 4.8GHz memory) using Catalyst 10.6 WHQL
  
• AMD ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB (850MHz GPU, 4.8GHz memory) using Catalyst 10.6 WHQL
  
• AMD ATI Radeon HD 5850 1GB (725MHz GPU, 4.0GHz memory) using Catalyst 10.6 WHQL
  
• XFX Radeon HD 5870 Black Edition (900MHz GPU, 5GHz memory) using Catalyst 10.6 WHQL

Nvidia graphics cards

• Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 1.5GB (756MHz core, 1,512MHz stream processors, 3.8GHz Memory) using ForceWare 197.75 WHQL
  
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 1GB (675MHz core, 1,350MHz stream processors, 3.6GHz memory) using ForceWare 258.80 release driver

Games Tested

• Colin McRae: Dirt 2 (DX11)
  
• STALKER: Call of Pripyat (DX11)
  
• Crysis (DX10, Very High)
  
• Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (DX11)