At 2560x1600, the Enthusiast class video cards were more than a match for the aging technology powering Wolfenstein. The GeForce GTX 295 barely dipped below 60FPS at all. While the Radeon HD 4870 X2 and GeForce GTX 285 were slightly more challenged, they both performed extremely well, both with average framerates approaching 60FPS. The less expensive GeForce GTX 275 and Radeon HD 4890 both delivered excellent experiences as well, though the GTX 275 did enjoy a measurable performance advantage. The very inexpensive GeForce GTS 250 ran nicely at 2560x1600, but we did have to turn down the Shadow Quality and Post Process Quality options to make the game playable. The Radeon HD 4770 did not perform well at all at 2560x1600. Even with the lowest possible settings, the input delay and stuttering gameplay quality proved too unpleasant to be playable.

All four of the video cards we tested at 1920x1200 were playable with maximum available settings in Wolfenstein. The GeForce GTX 275 and Radeon HD 4890 knocked the game out of the park at 1920x1200, giving us average framerates very close to the games cap of 60FPS. The GeForce GTS 250 and Radeon HD 4770 performed admirably as well, but the GTS 250 did enjoy a performance advantage of about 27%.

At 1680x1050, the GeForce GTS 250 and Radeon HD 4770 both gave us phenomenally smooth gameplay experiences. However, the GeForce GTS 250 was technically faster, giving us a framerate advantage of about 14%.

Wolfenstein sipped our test system's memory, using only about 600MB during peak load and about 500MB on average. The game was a lightweight on our CPU as well, averaging 22% to 36% total usage of our quad-core CPU. The CPU and Memory utilization was not significantly different between the two brands of GPUs we used in this evaluation.