Autumn 2009 Graphics Card Upgrade Guide

Written by Harry Butler

October 1, 2009 | 11:59

Tags: #5870 #fastest-graphics-card #graphics-card #hd-5870 #new-ati-graphics-card #radeon #upgrade

Companies: #ati #bit-tech #nvidia

Call of Duty: World at War

Publisher: Activision

Call of Duty: World at War is Treyarch’s controversial World War II shooter set on the Pacific and Eastern fronts, where you switch roles between an American Marine and a Russian soldier who survives Stalingrad and follows the push into Berlin at the end of the war.

World at War uses a beefed up version of the proprietary engine used in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which was developed by Infinity Ward and has easily been the most successful game in the series. It uses the DirectX 9.0 renderer exclusively and features true world dynamic lighting, HDR lighting, dynamic shadowing and depth of field amongst other things.

We used the full retail version of the game downloaded from Steam, which was patched to version 1.3.1080 and for our gameplay testing, we did a 90-second manual run through from the second mission in the game where you are part of a beach landing in the Pacific. It appears to be one of the more intensive parts of the game with lots of explosions, water, smoke and lighting effects thrown in for good measure.

All of the in-game settings were set to their maximum values, including texture details which were configured to 'Extra'. The 'Dual Video Cards' option was enabled for the multi-GPU configurations, but was disabled for all single GPU cards. Finally, anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering were controlled from inside the game.

Autumn 2009 Graphics Card Upgrade Guide Call of Duty: World at War Autumn 2009 Graphics Card Upgrade Guide Call of Duty: World at War
Click to enlarge

Call of Duty: World at War

1,680 x 1,050 0xAA 16xAF, DirectX 9, Maximum Detail

  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 1,792MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 896MB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260-216 896MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
  • Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
    • 90.0
    • 80.0
    • 78.0
    • 69.0
    • 80.0
    • 64.0
    • 84.0
    • 64.0
    • 78.0
    • 59.0
    • 78.0
    • 57.0
    • 73.0
    • 50.0
    • 61.0
    • 44.0
    • 55.0
    • 33.0
    • 80.0
    • 22.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Call of Duty: World at War

1,680 x 1,050 4xAA 16xAF, DirectX 9, Maximum Detail

  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 1,792MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 896MB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260-216 896MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
  • Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
    • 90.0
    • 75.0
    • 81.0
    • 62.0
    • 70.0
    • 54.0
    • 70.0
    • 52.0
    • 66.0
    • 48.0
    • 68.0
    • 46.0
    • 61.0
    • 43.0
    • 49.0
    • 32.0
    • 42.0
    • 26.0
    • 78.0
    • 22.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Call of Duty: World at War

1,920 x 1,200 0xAA 16xAF, DirectX 9, Maximum Detail

  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 1,792MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 896MB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260-216 896MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
  • Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
    • 90.0
    • 78.0
    • 83.0
    • 67.0
    • 76.0
    • 56.0
    • 74.0
    • 53.0
    • 71.0
    • 49.0
    • 65.0
    • 43.0
    • 60.0
    • 39.0
    • 52.0
    • 34.0
    • 47.0
    • 27.0
    • 80.0
    • 21.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Call of Duty: World at War

1,920 x 1,200 4xAA 16xAF, DirectX 9, Maximum Detail

  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 1,792MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 896MB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260-216 896MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
  • Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
    • 86.0
    • 62.0
    • 73.0
    • 53.0
    • 62.0
    • 43.0
    • 61.0
    • 41.0
    • 57.0
    • 39.0
    • 60.0
    • 39.0
    • 53.0
    • 32.0
    • 43.0
    • 26.0
    • 35.0
    • 21.0
    • 73.0
    • 17.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Call of Duty: World at War

2,560 x 1,600 0xAA 16xAF, DirectX 9, Maximum Detail

  • ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 896MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260-216 896MB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 1,792MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
  • Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
    • 64.0
    • 44.0
    • 56.0
    • 36.0
    • 55.0
    • 34.0
    • 48.0
    • 31.0
    • 50.0
    • 30.0
    • 80.0
    • 27.0
    • 43.0
    • 26.0
    • 33.0
    • 19.0
    • 31.0
    • 16.0
    • 68.0
    • 13.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Call of Duty: World at War

2,560 x 1,600 4xAA 16xAF, DirectX 9, Maximum Detail

  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 896MB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260-216 896MB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 1,792MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
  • Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
    • 49.0
    • 33.0
    • 53.0
    • 32.0
    • 46.0
    • 28.0
    • 43.0
    • 27.0
    • 70.0
    • 23.0
    • 39.0
    • 21.0
    • 35.0
    • 20.0
    • 26.0
    • 14.0
    • 20.0
    • 12.0
    • 56.0
    • 10.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

For analysis of these and all other results, please read the Results Analysis page.
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