Benchmarks: Prey, Quake Wars
Moving on we now have Prey and for this first lot of results the older Radeon HD 2900XT fairs rather well. The newer Radeon HD 3870 on the other hand does not as it was actually the slowest graphics card we tested in Prey. Nevertheless, at 1920x1200 playable frame rates are easily achieved, so it's not a complete loss.
Turning on the 4xAA/16xAF settings hurt the Radeon HD 2900XT as it fell down with the Radeon HD 3870, both of which were now slightly slower than the GeForce 8800 GTS. The Radeon HD 3870 was 11% slower than the GeForce 8800 GT though both still provided playable performance at 1920x1200.
The Radeon HD 3870 is slightly slower than the 2900XT in Quake Wars, though it was able to defeat the GeForce 8800 GTS. Unfortunately this meant that the Radeon HD 3870 was 21% slower than the GeForce 8800 GT at 1920x1200. Even at 1680x1050 the Radeon HD 3870 was still 18% slower than the GeForce 8800 GT with anti-aliasing disabled.
Turning on the 4xAA/16xAF settings in Quake Wars really hurt the Radeons, as the 3870 only managed perfectly playable performance at 1440x900. Here the Radeon HD 3870 was 30% slower than the GeForce 8800 GT which is a very convincing loss.