Legit Video Card Reviews

HIS Radeon HD 4870 CrossFire Video Card Review - GDDR5 Arrives

Manufacturer: HIS
Product: Radeon HD 4870
Date: Wed, Jun 25, 2008 - 12:00 AM
Written By: Nathan Kirsch -
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S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Benchmark

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl uses the 'X-ray Engine' to power the graphics. It is a DirectX 8/9 Shader Model 3.0 graphics engine. Up to a million polygons can be on-screen at any one time, which makes it one of the more impressive engines on the market today. The engine features HDR rendering, parallax and normal mapping, soft shadows, widescreen support, weather effects and day/night cycles. As with other engines that utilize deferred shading (such as Unreal Engine 3 and CryENGINE2), the X-ray Engine does not support anti-aliasing with dynamic lighting enabled. However, a "fake" form of anti-aliasing can be enabled with the static lighting option; this format utilizes a technique to blur the image to give the false impression of anti-aliasing. The game takes place in a thirty square kilometer area, and both the outside and inside of this area is rendered to the same amount of detail.


S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Benchmark Settings

The game was benchmarked with full dynamic lighting and maximum quality settings at 1920x1200 and 1280x1024 resolutions.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Benchmark Performance

Benchmark Results: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl was and still is a fun game to play now that the developer fixed many of the bugs found in the game through a series of patches. The $229 GeForce 9800 GTX+ and the Radeon HD 4870 traded wins at different resolutions here again. The Radeon HD 4870 was significantly quicker than the Radeon HD 4850!

Next Page - BioShock


Review Index
Page 1 - The Radeon 4000 Series Officially Launches
Page 2 - A Closer Look at the Radeon HD 4870
Page 3 - Under The Heat Spreader
Page 4 - Retail Box and Bundle
Page 5 - The Test System
Page 6 - Tomb Raider: Anniversary
Page 7 - Company of Heroes
Page 8 - World in Conflict
Page 9 - S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Page 10 - BioShock
Page 11 - Crysis
Page 12 - Call of Duty 4
Page 13 - Lightsmark 2007
Page 14 - 3DMark 2006
Page 15 - 3DMark Vantage
Page 16 - Temperatures
Page 17 - Overclocking
Page 18 - Power Consumption and Final Thoughts