ATI Radeon 5850 & 5830 Review - Half-Life 2

Half-Life 2 is the classic first person shooter. It is a DX9 title. At this point DX9 doesn't really tax graphics hardware with any of its "features," and any benchmarking comes down to a pushing raw pixels. Half-Life 2 does not like the extra video RAM provided by the Eyefinity6, and until you get to Eyefinity and beyond it doesn't like CrossFireX.

The Source Engine is no match for the 5850 and 5830, even at Eyefinity. Widescreen resolutions produce results in excess of 120fps, while Eyefinity is near or above 60fps.

In Eyefinity, the 5870, 5850 and 5830 offer fairly linear steps. However, the 5770 performs very similar to the 5830. In widescreen the 5770 actually outperforms the 5830. This is a result of the higher clockspeed on the 5770, and the Source Engine not needing all of the Unified Shaders at these low resolutions.

Hitting 60fps

The 5850 and 5830 perform amazingly well, with only the 5830 failing 60fps at 5760x1200.