Configuration:

A system with the following components was used for this review:

» Intel Core i7 920 quad core processor
» Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R LGA 1366 X58 ATX motherboard (BIOS F6)
» G.Skill 6GB PC3-12800 DDR3 triple channel memory (1600MHz, 9-9-9-24)
» Maxtor MaxLine III 250GB SATA 3Gbps hard drive
» TSST Super WriteMaster optical drive
» Nesteq EECS 700 Watt power supply
» Windows 7 Pro 64-Bit operating system

All tests were conducted in the 64-Bit version of Windows 7 Pro, and the Windows 7 drivers provided in the box were used. The screenshot below provides details regarding the Sapphire Radeon HD5850 1GB graphics card as provided by Techpowerup.com's GPU-Z and the Catalyst Control Center's Overdrive tab.



The following configurations will be tested against the Vapor-X Radeon HD5870 1GB graphics card in this review...

» 1x Sapphire Radeon HD5850 1GB stand alone
» 2x Sapphire Radeon HD5850 1GB CrossFire
» 1x Sapphire Radeon HD5750 1GB stand alone
» 2x Sapphire Radeon HD5750 1GB CrossFire
» 1x Sapphire Radeon HD4890 1GB stand alone



Testing:

The tests to be executed are detailed in the list below. Each card was run through the following tests, and the system was rebooted between each run.

» FutureMark 3DMark Vantage
» SiSoftware Sandra Rendering
» Heaven v1.0 (DirectX 11)
» World in Conflict (DirectX 10)
» Crysis (DirectX 10)
» Resident Evil 5 (DirectX 10)
» Windows 7 Experience
» Thermal Testing
» Power Consumption Testing

This list includes a pair of familiar synthetic benchmarks, a new DirectX 11 capable benchmark, three DirectX 10 benchmarks associated with 3D games, a look at the Windows 7 Experience results, some thermal testing, and some power consumption testing.