ATI Radeon 5870 Eyefinity6 Review - Hitting 60fps

Submitted by skipclarke on 5 April, 2010 - 15:09

Article Type: 
Review

While our testing is designed to stress the card as much as possible, we all realize that games have quality settings for a reason. So, beyond seeing where the breaking point is for any individual card, I wanted to provide some insight into what image quality you can expect and get 60fps at 5760x1080 (3x1920x1080) Eyefinity.

Note, it is simply not possible to hit 60fps in some games at this resolution. In those instances we shot for 30fps.

Batman: Arkham Asylum - Turning off AA allows you to hit 60fps with a single Eyefinity6. I also hit 57fps with 2xAA and lowering the settings to "High" from "Very High." The only difference this makes is to turn off Ambient Occlusion.

Battle Forge - etting AA to 2x, and setting Shadow Quality, SSAO and FX Quality at High (from Very High) will get you 30fps in Battle Forge. I could only get in the mid 50's if I set it to 4800x900, turned off AA, stopped forcing DX11, turned off SSAO and set everything to Medium. Battle Forge is simply a 30fps game (with any amount of eye candy).

Dirt 2 - I cracked 60fps at 4800x900 @ 2xAA. I took everything set at "Ultra" down to "High", except for Water. This allowed me to maintain the tessellated water in DX11. I also lowered Post Processing from High to Low. With plenty of options, there are a number of variations available to suit your taste.

Far Cry 2 - 60fps can be attained with 0xAA on Very High quality settings.

GTA IV - I worked for a while to get an fps improvement on this benchmark tool. Even cutting the settings to 1/2 or 1/3 of max, and I had only increased 2fps to 30fps total. I'm sure that lower settings would make an impact in the real game, but I'm not seeing it here. I'm also do for a re-format and re-install. Don't think I will be carrying over GTA IV into the benchmark lineup, given its limited impact.

HAWX - I was able to get 65fps by turning each of the DX10 effects down a notch. This means Shadows and Sun Shafts at Low, and SSAO at Medium.

Heaven Demo - It is not possible to hit 60fps with this benchmark on a single GPU at Eyefinity resolutions. Considering it is meant to test/tax your system, that is to be expected. 40fps+ can be hit with 0xAA and 1xAF, but that looks downright horrible. Here is what I was able to achieve with a reasonable quality:

  • DX9: 4800x900, 2xAA, 4xAF, low shaders - 34fps, med shaders - 28fps
  • DX10: 4800x900, 2xAA, 4xAF, low shaders - 32fps, med shaders - 26fps
  • DX11: 4800x900, 2xAA, 4xAF, tessellation enabled, low shaders - 23fps, med shaders - 20fps

Half-Life 2 - The Source Engine hits 60fps in HL2 at max settings on one Eyefinity6 card.

STALKER - 60fps will be tough to achieve and still utilize all the DX10/11 goodies they are tossing at you. 30fps may be a better goal (on a single card), like with Crysis before it. Two cards and you might get the lofty 60fps, but not with max settings and certainly not with Eyefinity. I was able to achieve this balance of performance and quality, basically doubling fps. You can get a few more fps by dropping to DX10 and reducing SSAO even more, but it's only 1-2fps for a lot of quality loss. High Preset, DX11, 4800x900, 2xAA, DX10.1 style MSAA, HDAO SSAO, Ultra SSAO, Use DX10.1, Enable Tessellation, Contact Hardening Shadows:

  • Day - 25fps
  • Night - 23fps
  • Rain - 25fps
  • Sun Shafts - 20fps