1680x1050 - Gaming Performance

At 1680x1050, it seems virtually any semi-modern gaming-oriented graphics card can manhandle Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. The mid-range, four-year-old GeForce 9600 GT managed to average 37fps. The Radeon HD 6670, which we usually consider too gutless for gaming, mustered 30fps. Even the GTS 450 and HD 6750 earned 46 and 48fps.

Moving up the graph, the results quickly ascend beyond 60fps and there are a few points to note. The HD 5870 outpaced the 6950 by 5fps while the GTX 560 Ti was just 2fps slower than the 6950. The high-end HD 6970 and GTX 480 were just 3fps faster than the 5870, while the GTX 580 captured the top of our performance chart with 110fps.

In comparing MW3 to MW2, we found the older game to be more demanding in our test as the HD 6950 was 10% faster in MW3, while the GTX 570 performed 8% better.