Crysis Warhead (DX10)

Crysis Warhead does like to punish graphics cards, but the visuals do look good there is no doubt. With Crysis Warhead, we concentrated on choosing settings that each card is capable of rather than matching settings between the two. Basically, the HIS HD 4870 iCooler x3 Native HDMI 1GB GDDR5 gives you the extra boost you need to get a similar gameplay experience as the 4850 at Gamer settings, but at Enthusiast visual settings instead. It's quite a jump visually, especially with water, although there are many little details that are enhanced.

Assassin's Creed (DX10)

Our run through is manual rather than a recorded demo, but we stuck to a repeatable route that had the littlest interaction with random game elements. The spikes you see around the 35 second and 75 second marks are the points where we climb a ladder from an enclosed alleyway; the higher we get the lower the framerates become. From a settings point of view, the 4870 was at maximum, but we had to lower the 4850's post processing from 4 to 3 to match the framerates.

Racedriver: GRID (DX9)

Like Assasin's Creed, our run through is manual rather than a recorded demo, but there is no random interactions on the track during a test run as it's just you and the ghost car. Again, everything was set to the highest possible in-game at 1680x1050. The HIS HD 4870 however allowed us to increase the 4xMSAA of the 4850 to 8xMSAA and get a slightly smoother game to boot. In reality, both cards do great here, but still ... 8xMSAA and higher framerates for the win.