Performance Tests

The graphics cards are ranked in the diagrams in the order of ascending recommended price. Here is the full list:

• Radeon HD 4770 0.5GB (750/3200MHz)
• GeForce GTS 250 1GB (738/2200MHz)
• GeForce GTS 250 2GB (738/2200MHz)
• Radeon HD 4850 0.5GB (625/1998MHz)
• Radeon HD 4870 1GB (750/3800MHz)
• GeForce GTX 260 0.9GB (575/1998MHz)
• Radeon HD 4770 CrossFire 2x0.5GB (750/3200MHz)
• Radeon HD 4890 1GB (850/3900MHz)
• GeForce GTX 275 0.9GB (633/2268MHz)

As you can note, I brought the cards’ frequencies in compliance with the respective reference cards’ frequencies for this test session. I will not test them at overclocked frequencies because there are too many models some of which are quite poor in terms of overclockability.

Synthetic benchmarks come first.

3DMark 2006

Obviously, there is no strict correlation between the pricing and performance of the cards in 3DMark 2006 although the Radeon HD 4770, the cheapest product in this test session, has the lowest performance indeed. Next go the two GeForce GTS 250. By the way, the two GeForce GTS 250 with different amounts of onboard memory are absolutely identical in terms of performance in this benchmark as well as in the other tests. Therefore I will not comment upon this issue in this section anymore.

The recommended price of the Radeon HD 4850 512MB is $10 higher than that of the GeForce GTS 250 but its 3DMark06 results are lower – it only has a small advantage over the Radeon HD 4770. The Radeon HD 4870 1GB and GeForce GTX 260 896MB are similar to each other and somewhat faster than the GTX 260. Then, the CrossFireX configuration built out of two Radeon HD 4770 cards proves to be the fastest in 3DMark 2006, outperforming the more expensive Radeon HD 4890 1GB and GeForce GTX 275 896MB. This is a nice start for CrossFireX technology, but we are yet to see how it will do in real-life games. Let’s check out the second synthetic benchmark now.

3DMark Vantage

The diagram below shows not the overall 3DMark Vantage scores but the results of the cards in the graphics tests.

According to 3DMark Vantage, there is no point in overpaying for the graphics cards from Radeon HD 4770 to HD 4850. The four products in that range score the same amount of points in the GPU test. Then, there is a 25% performance jump as we move from the Radeon HD 4870 to the GeForce GTX 260 while the CrossFireX HD 4770 configuration turns in an impressive result, winning the test once again. We can also note that the GeForce GTX 275 enjoys a small advantage over the Radeon HD 4890.