X-bit labs

The Two Tigers: Asus EAH3870 TOP/G/HTDI/512M and EAH3850 TOP/G/HTDI/256M (page 7)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 01/29/2008 | 03:47 PM ]

Performance in First-Person 3D Shooters

Battlefield 2142

This game doesn’t support display resolutions of 16:10 format, so we use a resolution of 1920x1440 pixels (4:3 format) instead of 1920x1200 for it.

The GPU clock rate increased from 775 to 850MHz doesn’t make the ASUS EAH3870 TOP much faster. It is only 4-6% ahead of the reference card, which cannot affect your playing comfort. The advantage of the ASUS EAH3850 TOP is outlined sharper, especially at resolutions above 1280x1024. Its performance is 10-13% higher than that of the reference card, yet this has little practical effect, too. The list of playable resolutions remains the same. Note also that the increased clock rates help the ASUS EAH3850 TOP compete successfully with the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT 256MB.

BioShock

BioShock doesn’t support FSAA when running in Windows Vista’s DirectX 10 environment. That’s why we benchmarked the cards without FSAA.

The TOP series cards from ASUS are not any better than the respective reference card for playing BioShock. The senior model allows playing comfortably at resolutions up to 1920x1200 inclusive while the junior card can be used to play at 1600x1200 or 1680x1050. Both are somewhat slower than the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT 256MB.