Performance in Strategies

Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts

The new add-on to Company of Heroes is tested in DirectX 10 mode only since it provides the highest quality of the visuals.

The average frame rate of the overclocked Radeon HD 3870 is but slightly higher than that of the non-overclocked sample. More considerable is the increase in minimum speed at 1280x1024 where the gameplay becomes much smoother. The card can’t make it to the results of the Radeon HD 3870 X2 but is only 5% slower than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB at 1600x1200 and higher resolutions. That’s a good result, but it comes at a price.

Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars

The game having a frame rate limiter, you should consider the minimum speed of the cards in the first place.

This game is counted among our benchmarks yet it cannot say anything about the overclocked RV670: the ATI Radeon HD 3870 easily hits the speed limit in every display mode even at its default frequencies.

World in Conflict

The extreme overclocking helps the Radeon HD 3870 catch up with the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB and GeForce 9600 GT. The overclocked memory coupled with the more efficient ring-bus memory controller says its word at the higher resolutions: the gap from the GeForce 9800 GTX is just 1fps at 1600x1200. At a resolution of 1920x1200 the overclocked Radeon HD 3870 even takes first place, beating every opponent and showing the best minimum speed.