ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB Benchmarks - Vista vs. Win7
This article is an update of our EyeFinity Benchmarks and the Radeon 5870. The update is migrate to Win7 and set baselines there for future benchmark comparisons. The original benchmarks can be found here. My new rig currently stands at:
- ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB Catalyst 9.11
- Windows 7
- EVGA X58 Tri-SLI Motherboard
- Intel i7 920 at 4x2.67GHz
- 12GB G.Skill DDR3 RAM
- 2x Samsung 320GB T-Series HDD (one for the OS and games; one for swap file and FRAPS)
- LG Super Multi Blu (HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Player)
- Onboard audio
- Corsair HX1000
- Antec Skeleton
- Logitch K340 Keyboard & Performance MX Mouse
- 3x Dell U2410
New Baselines
Overall, performance increases were minimal and in line with what you've ready in other reviews on Win7. Mostly it was just 3-5fps increases, but each frame is appreciated at 5760x1200. However we did see 20-40fps increases in Half-Life 2, at 1680x1050 and 1920x1200. I ran the tests multiple times (each being three loops) and got the same results each time.
Far Cry 2 AA Analysis
In general our AA analysis showed the same 1-3fps increase. We saw the larger increases of 3fps at higher resolutions at Very High/4xAA, Ultra/2xAA and Ultra/4xAA. We did see major improvements at 8xAA, with High and very adding 7fps and 9fps respectively. These are added to 17fps and 13fps baselines, ending up with 25fps and 22fps. Ultra/8xAA actually pulled 15fps, where it hard locked the machine under Vista. While all of these results would be completely unplayable, they do show that something got tuned under the hood of Win7.
Conclusions
Not sure what brought the improvements. Was it a "cleaner" install? Was it updated Catalyst drivers (I moved from 9.10 to 9.11 in addition to the OS upgrade). Or was it some fine tuning under the hood of Win7? No way to tell for sure. This set of benchmarks was really about finding performance increases (though they are always welcome), but in setting new baselines in the new OS.
What's Next?
I will be testing new Radeon cards as they are ready for EyeFinity primetime. I am also going to look for new games to benchmark, as our list has dwindled a bit.