3DMark Vantage Benchmark Results

3DMark Vantage is a computer benchmark by Futuremark (formerly named Mad Onion) to determine the DirectX 10 performance of 3D game performance with graphics cards. A 3DMark score is an overall measure of your system's 3D gaming capabilities, based on comprehensive real-time 3D graphics and processor tests. By comparing your score with those submitted by millions of other gamers you can see how your gaming rig performs, making it easier to choose the most effective upgrades or finding other ways to optimize your system.

There are two graphics tests in 3DMark Vantage: Jane Nash (Graphics Test 1) and New Calico (Graphics Test 2). The Jane Nash test scene represents a large indoor game scene with complex character rigs, physical GPU simulations, multiple dynamic lights, and complex surface lighting models. It uses several hierarchical rendering steps, including for water reflection and refraction, and physics simulation collision map rendering. The New Calico test scene represents a vast space scene with lots of moving but rigid objects and special content like a huge planet and a dense asteroid belt.

At Benchmark Reviews, we believe that synthetic benchmark tools are just as valuable as video games, but only so long as you're comparing apples to apples. Since the same test is applied in the same controlled method with each test run, 3DMark is a reliable tool for comparing graphic cards against one-another.

1680x1050 is rapidly becoming the new 1280x1024. More and more widescreen are being sold with new systems or as upgrades to existing ones. Even in tough economic times, the tide cannot be turned back; screen resolution and size will continue to creep up. Using this resolution as a starting point, the maximum settings were applied to 3DMark Vantage include 8x Anti-Aliasing, 16x Anisotropic Filtering, all quality levels at Extreme, and Post Processing Scale at 1:2.

Our first test looks promising; at 1680x1050 the ASUS EAH5870V2 shows a 14% gain from the 150 MHz (17.6%) overclock I dialed in for all of the testing. All the results are very even and linear, just the way synthetic benchmarks are supposed to be.

At 1920x1200 native resolution, things look much the same as they did at the lower screen size. The 5870 shows that it keeps going and going as the GPU clock rate goes up. It's the only card that can break 30FPS at this resolution, and it's pretty obvious as the test plays out on the screen. All the lower choices seem choppy by comparison. Let's take a look at test#2, which has a lot more surfaces to render, with all those asteroids flying around the doomed planet New Calico.

In the medium resolution New Calico test, the overclocked ASUS EAH5870V2 sits right on top again and performance scales well with higher clock rates. It takes a 1.0 GHz Cypress core to get over 30 FPS in this benchmark, which shows how tough it really is. Once again, the only card that comes close is the HD 5850, everyone's favorite overachiever.

At a higher screen resolution of 1920x1200, we see the lone 512MB card falling well behind, and the HD 5850 retains its spot as the closest competitor to the 5870 cards. Even the fastest single GPU cards have trouble rendering this scene, with an average frame rate in the mid 20s. Soon this benchmark suite may be replaced with DX11-based tests, but in the fading days of DX10 it has been a very reliable benchmark for high-end video cards. It always scales consistently, and the results here clearly show the benefit of overclocking the Radeon HD 5870 chip.

We need to look at some actual gaming performance to verify these results, so let's take a look in the next section, at how these cards stack up in the standard bearer for gaming benchmarks, Crysis.

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