ATI Radeon 5770 & 5750 Review - H.A.W.X.

H.A.W.X. is one last title that ATI has been showing off with regards to its Radeon 5000 line. While the other titles are Hor+ and offer cutting-edge DX11 features, HAWX is quite the opposite. While it is a Hor+ title, it is only a DX10 title and runs quite well on a wide variety of hardware. While you can't hit 60fps on a 5700 or 5600 card with any great detail, 30fps is rather easily attainable.

The well running and scalable title makes it a natural fit when showcasing both lower-end hardware pushing three panels, and high-end hardware pushing six panels. It also comes as no surprise that the additional VRAM largely goes unused, considering the title runs capably on lower hardware.

One note in the HAWX benchmark. Above 1920x1200 the game simply would not allow 4xAA. While the scores provide that the title could handle it, the option simply is not available. Though it isn't our norm, we chose to accept 2xAA so that we could get consistent readings across the spectrum of hardware.

HAWX produces a clean stair step performance curve all the way through the 5750, in both widescreen and Eyefinity. The 5770 breaks 60fps at 1680x1050, and 30fps at 5040x1050 - all at max settings (except for the 2xAA). There is a significant performance drop with the 5670. With the right tweaks even the 5670 is playable at high fps on lower resolutions.

Hitting 60fps

Widescreen - I hit 65fps by turning the DX10 settings down one notch each. Shadows and Sun Shafts were set to Low, and SSAO to Medium.

Eyefinity - In addition to the above settings, dropping SSAO to low produced 46fps. Dropping the resolution to 4800x900 hit 61fps.