Left 4 Dead (DX9)

Left 4 Dead can scale quite nicely at first glance, but due to the nature of the game, it's a game you certainly don't won't to have low average frame rates with. With the X1800GTO, even with lowest settings at 1024x768, if you're rushed by a horde it's "Strobe lights at the disco". If you're not the sort to run around screaming when attacked, then the motion blur helps but it does make targetting difficult. Cranking up the settings to high (but low detail effects) and run at 1440x900 and you get the same sort of frame rates but without the strobing hordes. And of course the picture quality is much better too. Bottom line; you can see what you're missing with the 4670's. Both cards here perform similarly.

ETQW (OpenGL)

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars can rely a lot on a good CPU and subsystem, but improving the graphics card still makes for quite a jump. Settings here were low for the X1800GTO (the game chose it) and the X1800GTO had to be run at 1024x768 compared to the 1440x900 of the 4670's. It's pretty much unplayable on the X1800GTO unless you play with your settings and put them very low indeed. Hell, it was faster to play back the demo than it was to do a timedemo, as the timedemo naturally scaled to the fastest possible playback ... which was slower than actual game play speed!

The 4670's on the other hand made it pretty playable pretty full stop; the game chose to play at high settings. As with Left 4 Dead, the 4670 PCIe puts in slightly higher numbers, but during play the difference is not noticeable.