Test Configuration

Our testbed was the same as in our original article on the ASUS EAH 5850, namely:

• Motherboard: ASUS M4A79T
• Memory: OCZ3ALVE16004GK
• CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 965 BE
• Cooler: OCZ Vendetta 2
• HDD: HDD: WD 1500ADFD (Raptor)
• SSD: Intel SSDSA2MH080G15E (80 GB)
• Optical Drive: HP dvd1070i-H01 6 Multiformat DVD writer
• PSU: OCZ EvoStream (720W)
• Graphics Card: ASUS RADEON EAH5850, PowerColor RADEON HD 4890 (CF)*, MSI RADEON 4870*, Diamond MM RADEON 4870 X2*, BFG GeForce GTX280*
• Monitor: Acer H233H

* shown for reference only.

FutureMark 3DMark Vantage: Overall GPU Score

Since it doesn't contribute to the area of interest here, we are throwing out any of the CPU-related scores and focus on the GPU score and its breakdown into different subdivisions.

Aside from data on different other graphics cards, we have the results for overclocking the EAH 5850 at 1.1V/850MHz/4400Mbps, 1.25V/985MHz/4400Mbps and 1.3V 1023MHz/4600Mbps. Even increasing the voltage further didn't yeild much more frequency headroom on the core but, quite honestly, 300 MHz or ~ 40% overclocking headroom are extremely respectable.

Jane Nash

In a nutshell, the performance scales pretty well with the frequency increase and puts a 4890 CrossFire combo to shame.

Calico

Calico scales better for multi GPU solutions and the performance is good enough to trounce the RADEON 4870 X2 but just a tad behind the 4890 Crossfire configuration.