reviews

Sapphire Radeon HD5870 Video Card Review

Author: Will West

DFI LP UT X58-T3eH8 Chipset
Intel i7 920 @ 3.8Ghz
Swiftech Watercooling system
3 x 2GB of Mushkin Redline DDR3 1600 RAM
Seagate 7200.11 1TB SATA 7200RPM HD
Creative X-Fi PCI-Ex Soundcard
Enermax Revolution 1050Watt PSU
Asus 20X DVD Burner
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit Edition

Radeon HD5870(Catalyst 9.12)
Radeon HD4870X2(Catalyst 9.12)
Radeon HD4890(Catalyst 9.12)
GeForce GTX285(ForceWare 196.21)

All Anti-aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering was controlled through each game setting. These settings are all noted on each of the benchmarking pages.

Framerates were captured using a little software program called FRAPS. This program is very easy to use and appears to be very accurate. Gameplay was recorded from the start of the level and persisted for 120 seconds. Each resolution was tested twice with the results being weighted between the scores, most passes only varied by 2-5fps. Due to the nature of this testing the framerates recorded reflect real gameplay in a variety of situations with a genuine attempt to reproduce the passes as much as possible.

Benchmarks are next.