Review: Pixels for Pennies
SimHQ’s Spring ’08 Midrange GPU Roundup

Rainbow Six: Vegas 2’s in-game options were configured at high and quality level 2 chosen for its anti-aliasing setting. FRAPS was used to record the frame rate via run-throughs of the Terrorist Hunt game mode on the Villa map.

The Radeon 3870 pulls out a narrow margin in this newest Rainbow Six title, squeaking past the GeForce board by just a few frames at each resolution. The Radeon 3850 again trails behind, though producing decent frame rates up to 1680x1050.

DiRT was tested using a rally practice run. In-game settings were placed at high.

DiRT continues the 9600’s dominance at the lower resolutions, with the frame rates evening out and the Radeon 3870 actually pulling out a narrow victory by 1920x1200. The 3850 again trails behind both of the other tested boards and offers playable frame rates at only 1024x768, at least under these settings.

World in Conflict ships with a benchmark test included, which we used under high settings with 4x AA then enabled.

This RTS shows a significant performance gap between the tested GPUs, with the GeForce 9600 GT again upstaging the two Radeon boards. The 9600 outperforms the 3870 by a noteworthy 25% or more across the tested resolutions and is the only part of the three that might produce playable frame rates in WiC at these settings at 1920x1200. The 3850 quickly runs out of steam at any resolution above 1024x768, and the same can be said for the 3870 at 1280x1024.

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