Crysis: Warhead

We’ll start with Crysis: Warhead, one of our most demanding games.

The 80% reduction in shader units from the 5670 becomes apparent quickly here, as the 5450 and comparable cards are all in the teens for a framerate. This puts us at 75% below the 5670, and even compared to the GT220 the 5450 is still less than half as fast. Even with these already lower settings, we’re going to have to go lower yet to get playable framerates. This will set the stage for the entire review.

Once we drop down to Performance quality, we hike to up playable framerates at a cost visual fidelity. The 5450 is ahead of the GeForce 210 like we expected, but interestingly it’s behind the lower-clocked 4550. We can get just-playable framerates at 1280 here, and more than playable down at 1024.
The Test Far Cry 2
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  • uibo - Thursday, February 4, 2010 - link

    Why don't the Radeon "Cheese Slices" video screenshots have horizontal lines? The Nvidia ones have them...
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 4, 2010 - link

    It's an artifact of stepping through the video one frame at a time with MPC-HC with the MS MPEG-2 decoder. Doing so captures the angled lines correctly, but it doesn't quite capture some of the other artifacts exactly the same because it ends up a field (basically half a frame) ahead.

    In motion the Radeon cards are getting it right.
  • blaubart - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link

    Congrats Ryan, your Cheese Slices testing outside of a HTPC forum was really a big surprise for me! Keep on pushing AMD/Nvidia to realize that there's more than gamers in this world!

    > Horizontal 1p lines missing:
    I'm also wondering normally the 1p lines are no problem in screenshots (MPC-HC and more). Maybe you shot them during the "odd movement" (1h+3v see description in Cheese Slices thread). I have now edited Post #1: screenshots only during "even movement".

    This link shows it (sorry German):
    http://www.dvbviewer.info/forum/index.php?s=&s...">http://www.dvbviewer.info/forum/index.p...c=34863&...

    1080i-1 ---> odd movement
    1080i-2 ---> even movement

    What's more, GT220.png and G210.png show MA in 1p and "respone - noise" but VA in the ticker, How did you manage this? Ah I see, you left a mailaddress, I will send you a mail.
  • uibo - Thursday, February 4, 2010 - link

    Oh and the Nvidia G210 has some artifacts for the vertical lines with some pixels shifted right.
  • silverblue - Thursday, February 4, 2010 - link

    ...then this might call for an article to look at it in that very light. However, is there a higher performing part for both series that can be directly compared? I'm guessing not, as they all differ in some way, be it shader numbers, ROPs or texture units. The only way I can think to do it would be comparing two 512MB 4850s to a downclocked 5870, but even if that were possible, you'll still get a performance drop due to Crossfire. Hmm.
  • MrSpadge - Thursday, February 4, 2010 - link

    5770 is as close as it gets. THere's the difference in the memory subsystem, though. Could be that the best bench to run would be ShaderMark.
  • GeorgeH - Thursday, February 4, 2010 - link

    You mention the Sapphire's heatsink quite a bit, but I didn't see any pictures of it (at least the reverse side) in the article; was that an oversight or am I blind?
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 4, 2010 - link

    Oversight. I thought I had a stock photo of the rear. I'll get one in the morning.

    If you're really curious, it's the same heatsink that's on their 4350, which there are plenty of pictures of.
  • GeorgeH - Thursday, February 4, 2010 - link

    I see it now, thanks - it's actually not nearly as "bad" as I thought it'd be.
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 4, 2010 - link

    Oversight. I thought I had a stock photo of the rear. I'll get one in the morning.

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