Test System Setup

Processor(s): Intel Core i7 920 @ 3.8GHz (190MHz x 20)
Cooling: Noctua NH-U12P (Supplied by Noctua)
Motherboard(s): GIGABYTE EX58-UD5 (Supplied by GIGABYTE)
Memory: 3 X 2GB Kingston Hyper X PC3-16000 2000MHz DDR CL9 (Supplied by Kingston)
Hard Disk(s): Western Digital 300GB Velicorapter (Supplied by Kingston)
Operating System: Windows 7
Drivers: ATI Catalyst 9.10

Due to the fact that we've moved to a new operating system and added a whole bunch of new benchmarks, we ultimately find that all the results we have from our Vista tests are completely useless. What this means is that initially the number of cards in our benchmarks are limited. As we test more and more cards under the new setup it will quickly grow.

What that means is that for today we'll simply be comparing the HD 5870 Vapor-X from Sapphire against the standard HD 5870 from the same company. With heaps of new benchmarks and the ability to now test DirectX 11, we'll get straight into it. We won't go into what we've added, what we've removed and why we've done it. Instead we'll just get stuck into the benchmarks where you can find what is new.

Let's get started!

3DMark Vantage

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.0.1
Developer Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com
Product Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmarkvantage/
Buy It Here

3DMark Vantage is the new industry standard PC gaming performance benchmark from Futuremark, newly designed for Windows Vista and DirectX10. It includes two new graphics tests, two new CPU tests, several new feature tests, and support for the latest hardware.

3DMark Vantage is based on a completely new rendering engine, developed specifically to take full advantage of DirectX10, the new graphics API from Microsoft.

With only a small overclock on offer from the Vapor-X series of cards, it doesn't come as much of a surprise that there's only a small bump in performance numbers here when compared to the standard model.