System Setup

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770

EVGA nForce 790i Ultra SLI motherboard (for GeForce cards)
ASUS P5E3 Premium WiFi AP Edition (for Radeon cards)
4GB OCZ DDR3 @ 1333MHz

GeForce GTX 280
GeForce GTX 260
GeForce 9800 GTX+ SLI
ForceWare 177.83

AMD Radeon HD 4850
AMD Radeon HD 4870
Catalyst 8.7

AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2
Catalyst 8.8 beta

300GB Western Digital Caviar SE

Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit w/Service Pack 1

Benchmarks

Company of Heroes 1.71
F.E.A.R. 1.08
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion 1.2
Call of Duty 4 1.4
Half-Life 2 Episode Two
Crysis 1.2
Lost Planet
Crysis 1.21

Notes

Both ATI and NVIDIA supplied us with newer drivers for the GeForce GTX 200/9800 GTX and Radeon HD 4800 series cards than the drivers we tested with last week. In fact, ATI’s Series 5 driver is so new we just received it on Monday, we’ve been told it offers improved CrossFire performance over the 4850 hotfix driver that was released on Friday. We’re also testing the Radeon 4800 cards on ASUS’ P5E3 Premium X48 motherboard, whereas the 4850 was tested last week on the same motherboard as the GeForce cards, EVGA’s 790i SLI.