X-bit labs

The Two Tigers: Asus EAH3870 TOP/G/HTDI/512M and EAH3850 TOP/G/HTDI/256M (page 8)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko

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

Call of Juarez

As usual, graphics cards with 256 megabytes of local graphics memory are slow in this game. The GeForce 8800 GT 256MB is an especially poor sight as it is three times slower than the 512MB version of the same card.

The small performance gain provided by the pre-overclocked EAH3870 TOP is not enough to overtake the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT 512MB at 1280x1024: the ASUS card is 10% behind the leader. At the higher resolutions the Nvidia card suffers from driver-related problems with memory management and both versions of Radeon HD 3870 find themselves in the lead. That’s not a victory, however, as their speeds are too low for practical play.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

The ASUS cards produce a similar performance gain which is most conspicuous at resolutions below 1920x1200. As for actual play, the senior model is limited to 1280x1024 just as the reference Radeon HD 3870. The junior model is too slow even at the lowest tested resolution. The same is true for the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT 256MB whose minimum speed is too low.