3DMark Vantage measures Shader 4.0 (i.e., DirectX 10) performance and supports PhysX, a programming interface developed by Ageia (now part of NVIDIA) to transfer physics calculations from the system CPU to the video card GPU in order to increase performance. Mechanical physics is the basis for calculations about the interaction of objects. For example, if you shoot, what exactly will happen to the object when the bullet hits it? Will it break? Will it move? Will the bullet bounce back? Note that since we are considering only the GPU score provided by this program, physics calculations are not taken into account.

We ran this program at three 16:10 widescreen resolutions, 1680x1050, 1920x1200, and 2560x1600. First we used the “Performance” profile, and then we used the “Extreme” profile (basically enabling anti-aliasing at 4x, anisotropic filtering at 16x, and putting all detail settings at their maximum or “extreme” values). The results being compared are the “GPU Scores” achieved by each video card.

Radeon HD 4850 and Radeon HD 4870 didn’t produce a reliable score for the “Extreme” profile under 2560x1600, so these particular results should not be considered.

3DMark Vantage - Performance - 1680x1050	GPU Score	Difference
GeForce GTX 260/216	7167	32.06%
Radeon HD 4870	7135	31.47%
Radeon HD 5770	6831	25.87%
Radeon HD 4850	5477	0.92%
Radeon HD 5750	5427
GeForce GTS 250	5148	5.42%

3DMark Vantage - Performance - 1920x1200	GPU Score	Difference
GeForce GTX 260/216	6860	61.34%
Radeon HD 4870	5598	31.66%
Radeon HD 5770	5368	26.25%
Radeon HD 5750	4306
Radeon HD 4850	4252	0.00%
GeForce GTS 250	3893	9.22%

3DMark Vantage - Performance - 2560x1600	GPU Score	Difference
GeForce GTX 260/216	3840	54.47%
Radeon HD 4870	3230	29.93%
Radeon HD 5770	3048	22.61%
Radeon HD 5750	2486
Radeon HD 4850	2380	4.45%
GeForce GTS 250	2149	15.68%

3DMark Vantage - Extreme - 1680x1050	GPU Score	Difference
GeForce GTX 260/216	5615	37.93%
Radeon HD 5770	5109	25.50%
Radeon HD 4870	5093	25.10%
Radeon HD 5750	4071
GeForce GTS 250	4000	1.77%
Radeon HD 4850	3941	3.30%

3DMark Vantage - Extreme - 1920x1200	GPU Score	Difference
GeForce GTX 260/216	5240	60.79%
Radeon HD 5770	4106	25.99%
Radeon HD 4870	4040	23.96%
Radeon HD 5750	3259
Radeon HD 4850	3119	4.49%
GeForce GTS 250	3073	6.05%

3DMark Vantage - Extreme - 2560x1600	GPU Score	Difference
GeForce GTX 260/216	3020	58.36%
Radeon HD 5770	2417	26.74%
Radeon HD 5750	1907
GeForce GTS 250	1729	10.29%
Radeon HD 4870	518	268.15%
Radeon HD 4850	402	374.38%