Although unable to defeat the dual-GPU cards, the Radeon HD 5870 was the fastest single-GPU graphics card in Call of Duty: World at War. When you consider that even the Radeon HD 4890 is slower than the GeForce GTX 260 in the 2560x1600 test, the Radeon HD 5870 result is very positive. Overall, AMD’s latest offering was up to 60% faster than the Radeon HD 4870 and 43% faster than the Radeon HD 4890. The Radeon HD 5870 was also able to beat the GeForce GTX 285 by a 10% performance margin at 2560x1600. However, it was 19% slower than the Radeon HD 4870 X2 and 26% slower than the GeForce GTX 295, with these SLI and Crossfire enabled graphics cards reigning supreme in Call of Duty.
Company of Heroes is another game where the Radeon HD 4800 series struggled to compete. As you can see, the Radeon HD 4890 was trounced by the GeForce GTX 260 across the board, even though this was the slowest tested Nvidia graphics card. Performance of the new Radeon HD 5870 on the other hard was stellar, to say the least, as it proved to be the fastest graphics card available for this game with a comfortable lead. Specifically, it knocked off the GeForce GTX 295 by a 19% performance margin at 2560x1600. The Radeon HD 5870 was also three times faster than the Radeon HD 4870 in this particular game and as much as 51% faster than the Radeon HD 4870 X2 – which are simply incredible gains by any standard.
