Crysis

Publisher: Electronic Arts

We tested the game using the 64-bit executable under and DirectX 9 with the 1.21 patch applied. We used a custom timedemo recorded on the Harbor map which is more representative of gameplay than the built-in benchmark that renders things much faster than you're going to experience in game.



The Radeon HD 3200 graphics core on the Gigabyte 780G board with its slower CPU was even able to out perform the Nvidia GeForce 8200 core here on the Asus CrossHair II Formula. Even when we throw in a faster and more expensive GeForce 8500 GT (compared to 8400 GS) however it's still slower than the GeForce 8200 core: both have 16 shaders, but the 8200 runs at 1.2GHz whereas the 8500 is at only 900MHz. Both the GeForce Boost and Hybrid CrossFire see impressive scaling of 70 and 75 percent respectively, but the performance increase is notably better for AMD because the core performance is that much higher - improving from a mostly unplayable 25 FPS to very playable 43 FPS, compared to only 35 FPS max on the Nvidia solution.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Publisher: Activision

Built on an updated version of id Software's Doom 3 engine, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is a team-based first person shooter that recently obtained the title of being the first game to use John Carmack's megatexture technology: a single texture that spans the entire map.

ET:QW also makes use of many vehicles and large open areas which means the action in view can get really intensive in this team based shooter. It's also the only game in this suite that utilises OpenGL instead of the pretty much industry-standard DirectX API. We used the full retail version of the game patched to version 1.5.



There's very little in it when we compare the mPGUs on their own, just a couple of FPS tops with the Nvidia GeForce 8200 mPGU coming out slightly ahead, but both are playable at the lowest settings in ET:QW, even if it does look like a baboon's bottom. However when we turn on Hybrid graphics the performance of the AMD solution is again notably better, with scaling of 86 percent compared to only 47 percent with the Nvidia solution.

World in Conflict

Publisher: Sierra

For our testing purposes, we used a full retail copy of the game and patched it to version 1.007, which includes a few fixes and some improved performance under DirectX 9.



Yet again we see the performance of the AMD ATI Radeon HD 3200 core out perform the Nvidia GeForce 8200 by a few FPS, but more impressively is the Hybrid graphics performance where again AMD dominates with a fantastic scalable graphics solution for less money than Nvidia. In fact, for the 50 percent extra you get on the AMD Hybrid solution, Nvidia only manages to scrounge a mere 3.7 FPS extra - a mere 11.6 percent.