Radeon HD 5970 Single card and Crossfire review

Radeon HD 5970 CrossfireX

So on this page a handful of tests. Now as you can imagine, we left out the CPU limited games as really -- what's the point ? We where pleasantly surprised that Quad-GPU actually kicked in. Now scaling is still far off and AMD's official response is that they have not even worked on QUAD GPU performance.

None the the less, a taste of what's to come and expect ...

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Modern Warfare 2 is set five years on from COD4 and brings a new villain into town: Vladimir Makarov. All the trouble all starts when Makarov frames the US for a terrorist attack on a Russian airport (yes, the infamous airport level). The rest of the story follows the same intertwined British and US mission format as before, and the missions are all incredible set-pieces that involve storming oil rigs, climbing icy cliffs and, of course, an adrenaline packed snowmobile chase.  Visually the 3D engine seems to be the same as the COD4 one, it's tweaked and nearly abused to push out the very best of it's capability. the result is a very decent looking game really, smoke, fog, sun, vegetation detailed texturing of objects building and characters.

Image Quality setting:

• 4x Anti-Aliasing
• 16x Anisotropic Filtering
• All settings maxed out

Now check it out, in-between a single GPU based 5870 and 5970 the perf is not scaling very nice. Still it's positive scaling. Once we pop in a second 5970 then we see instant scaling. That's looking much better -- but can be better yes.

Anno 1404 - Dawn of Discovery

So ever since the first Anno series was launched many years ago, I have been playing this excellent RTS ever since. Heck, I had a ton of fun with the original game series like Anno 1602 and 1701. If you're unfamiliar with the Anno series of games, they have all been (1404 is the 3rd sequel) colony-builders that take place in vast archipelagos filled with pirates, natives, treasures, and rival colonies. Typically, players start with a single ship packed with essential goods with which they colonize a single island, and then need to expand their realm.

With the same principles and philosophy yet more trading dynamics in-game, this series changed a little. Next to that the graphics engine had an overhaul allowing a DX10 code path, brushing up and speeding up things here and there while pertaining really nice image quality.

So again we are in DirectX 10 mode with 4x Anti-Aliasing enabled. Now if you are playing your games at 2560x1600 then you are one happy dog you ! But granted you really need the uber-high-end-resolution to benefit from 4-way GPU scaling here.

Far Cry 2

Throw your memory back to the year 2004 and the release of the innovative Far Cry on PC. Developer Crytek managed to fashion one of the most convincing and striking locales in all of gaming, and satisfied gamers with the freedom to pass through the landscape and tackle enemies in almost any way they saw fit. You surely remember Jack Carver and that things were about to get seriously messed up for you? Well, tough luck. You are no longer at that deserted tropical island but hop into a jeep and arrive at the sandy savannah surroundings of Africa. And that's a change... as much as you'll no longer run into any mutants, aliens, or any superpowers or psychic powers. Also - you are no longer Jack Carver, you assume the role of one of nine different mercenaries who are embedded in the midst of a brutal civil war which rages in an imaginary African nation.

Everything that goes down is involved in a dirty little bush war in central Africa and you'll have to use a rusty AK-47 and whatever bits of scavenged land mine you can duct-tape together. Two factions struggle for supremacy: the United Front for Liberation and Labour and the Alliance for Popular Resistance, and both are known for blood and control.

We are in high-quality DX10 mode with 8x AA (anti-aliasing) and 16xAF (anisotropic filtering). And ooh .. i just felt something move in my pants. Check that out, scaling from one towards 2 GPU is already decent enough. But popping in another 2 GPU (one 5970) definitely shows massive rendering muscle (!)