Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB

Written by Tim Smalley

January 23, 2009 | 09:20

Tags: #2gb #4850 #analysis #board #card #design #drivers #evaluation #gddr3 #hd #performance #r700 #radeon #review #rv770 #x2

Companies: #amd #ati #sapphire #test

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway

Publisher: Ubisoft

While it hasn’t been as successful as Activision’s Call of Duty: World at War, Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway is still a fine game in its own right, continuing the Brothers in Arms franchise with the allied invasion of Holland during Operation Market Garden.

The combat is heavily squad reliant, with the players forced to use cover and covering fire to pin the enemy down and advance against their positions, with coordinated flanking tactics more important than pin point aim in achieving victory.

Running in the ever popular Unreal Engine 3, BIA:HH makes use of high resolution textures, destroyable cover and depth of field to deliver a highly detailed and convincing portrayal of wartime Holland. It's one of the most visually impressive Unreal Engine 3 implementations we've seen to date - a credit to Gearbox, the developers.

For testing we manually play through a section from the “Operation Market” chapter, with all in-game settings set to high. Unfortunately Unreal Engine 3 does not allow us to set anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering from in game. Anisotropic filtering was forced to 16x in the driver and anti-aliasing just isn't supported at all - when we tried forcing it in the driver, it made no difference to image quality or performance.

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway

1,680 x 1,050 0xAA 16xAF, DirectX 9, Maximum Detail

  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 1GB SLI
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 1,792MB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260-216 896MB SLI
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB CrossFire
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 1GB
  • Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260-216 896MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB
    • 97.6
    • 82.0
    • 96.5
    • 78.0
    • 95.9
    • 75.0
    • 92.2
    • 72.0
    • 91.5
    • 72.0
    • 88.9
    • 66.0
    • 83.9
    • 66.0
    • 80.9
    • 68.0
    • 75.5
    • 58.0
    • 74.9
    • 59.0
    • 74.7
    • 59.0
0
25
50
75
100
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway

1,920 x 1,200 0xAA 16xAF, DirectX 9, Maximum Detail

  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 1,792MB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 1GB SLI
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260-216 896MB SLI
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB CrossFire
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 1GB
  • Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260-216 896MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB
    • 96.3
    • 77.0
    • 95.9
    • 82.0
    • 94.3
    • 75.0
    • 85.2
    • 63.0
    • 83.5
    • 56.0
    • 80.3
    • 63.0
    • 72.4
    • 58.0
    • 70.5
    • 54.0
    • 65.4
    • 55.0
    • 65.1
    • 51.0
    • 64.9
    • 55.0
0
25
50
75
100
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway

2,560 x 1,600 0xAA 16xAF, DirectX 9, Maximum Detail

  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 1GB SLI
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 1,792MB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260-216 896MB SLI
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB CrossFire
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 1GB
  • Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260-216 896MB
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB
    • 89.4
    • 73.0
    • 83.9
    • 66.0
    • 78.9
    • 63.0
    • 66.6
    • 53.0
    • 64.1
    • 51.0
    • 56.2
    • 45.0
    • 50.6
    • 41.0
    • 49.2
    • 40.0
    • 44.1
    • 36.0
    • 43.7
    • 35.0
    • 43.3
    • 35.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Frames Per Second
  • Average
  • Minimum

Hell's Highway is another game where Nvidia's performance is inherently stronger and AMD's ability to get the most out of its CrossFire drivers isn't demonstrated here again. There's a 14 percent performance advantage in the GeForce GTX 285's favour at both 1,920 x 1,200 0xAA 16xAF and 2,560 x 1,600 0xAA 16xAF.
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