Asus ENGTX285 TOP overclocked graphics card

In Far Cry 2, we observed a quirk in behaviour with the HD 4870 X2. We used an ultra-high resolution of 2048 x 1536 to push the graphics cards to their limits and when we stepped up the performance quality settings and increased anti-aliasing from 2x to 4x, we naturally saw a drop in frame rate. With all of the different Nvidia set-ups, the drop was a consistent ten per cent but with the HD 4870 X2 it was 20 per cent.

The power draw for the HD 4870 X2 system under load was 360W which sounds rather high but falls between squarely between a single Asus GTX 285 and a pair of the Asus cards in SLI. That isn’t too surprising as the HD 4870 X2 carries two graphics chips. We didn’t overclock the HD 4870 X2 as our experience is that the reference card has very little scope for extra speed, as we saw when we reviewed the Sapphire Atomic.

3DMark Vantage Results
1920 x 1200, 4x AA, 16x AF

Longer bars are better