The Games of Christmas '08: GPU Performance Part 1

Need for Speed Undercover: GPU Performance

Benchmarking NFS: Undercover proved to be an interesting process but we finally decided on the Ocean and Wilson Circuit race for a worst case scenario benchmark run. The benchmark run involves running 4 laps of the circuit at the hardest difficulty setting with 7 other racers and a high traffic volume. The total amount of time usually ranged between 3:30 and 3:40 of gameplay time recorded in FRAPS.

1680 X 1050



2560 X 1600


It seems like all of the ATI fans out there finally have something to cheer about since there are no two ways about it: if you are want to play this game on a regular basis, you are best off with an ATI card. The GTX 280 is able to nudge in a bit at higher resolutions due to its 1GB of memory but other than that, the HD4870 1GB is the king of the hill. Wait a second….the HD 4870 1GB? What happened to the HD 4870 X2? Well, it fell victim to its Achilles heel: a lack of Crossfire profiles. This meant completely lackluster performance from one end to another.