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 - 1680x1050 - Performance	GPU Score	Difference
GeForce GTX 260/216	7167	4.92%
Radeon HD 4870	7135	4.45%
Radeon HD 5770	6831
Radeon HD 4850	5477	24.72%
Radeon HD 5750	5427	25.87%
GeForce GTS 250	5148	32.69%

3DMark Vantage - 1920x1200 - Performance	GPU Score	Difference
GeForce GTX 260/216	6860	27.79%
Radeon HD 4870	5598	4.28%
Radeon HD 5770	5368
Radeon HD 5750	4306	24.66%
Radeon HD 4850	4252	26.25%
GeForce GTS 250	3893	37.89%

3DMark Vantage - 2560x1600 - Performance	GPU Score	Difference
GeForce GTX 260/216	3840	25.98%
Radeon HD 4870	3230	5.97%
Radeon HD 5770	3048
Radeon HD 5750	2486	22.61%
Radeon HD 4850	2380	28.07%
GeForce GTS 250	2149	41.83%

3DMark Vantage - 1680x1050 - Extreme	Score	Difference
GeForce GTX 260/216	5615	9.90%
Radeon HD 5770	5109
Radeon HD 4870	5093	0.31%
Radeon HD 5750	4071	25.50%
GeForce GTS 250	4000	27.73%
Radeon HD 4850	3941	29.64%

3DMark Vantage - 1920x1200 - Extreme	Score	Difference
GeForce GTX 260/216	5240	27.62%
Radeon HD 5770	4106
Radeon HD 4870	4040	1.63%
Radeon HD 5750	3259	25.99%
Radeon HD 4850	3119	31.64%
GeForce GTS 250	3073	33.62%

3DMark Vantage - 2560x1600 - Extreme	Score	Difference
GeForce GTX 260/216	3020	24.95%
Radeon HD 5770	2417
Radeon HD 5750	1907	26.74%
GeForce GTS 250	1729	39.79%
Radeon HD 4870	518	366.60%
Radeon HD 4850	402	501.24%