Pixel Shader Performance

With an exception made for 3DMark Vantage's GPU Particles test, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 shows some immense pixel shader performance, while both the Radeon HD 4870 and 4850 deliver strong showings as well. The 4850 is overall faster than its direct competition, the GeForce 9800 GTX and GeForce 9800 GTX+, while the 4870 trades blows with the GeForce GTX 260.

AMD's new architecture seems to handle more math-heavy shader effects like perlin noise more efficiently, while Nvidia's GPUs seems to be better optimised for parallax occlusion mapping. There's very little between the two in our final pixel shader test, GPU Particles, and that really sums up these two cards.