We know who
the daddy is when it comes to single-card graphics performance, and we've even witnessed NVIDIA and ATI
duking it out with multiple cards before, but this here roundup is what you might call
comprehensive. Comparing a mind-boggling 23 different configurations, the
Tech Report guys set out to determine the best bang for your DirectX 11 buck. Their conclusion won't shock those of you who've been following the recent love affair
between reviewers and NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 460: a pair of these eminently affordable cards regularly outpaced the best single-GPU solutions out there. Slightly more intriguing, however, was the discovery that its elder siblings, the
GTX 470 and 480, have improved in performance to the point of being markedly ahead of
ATI's Radeon HD 5870, with the blame for this shift being put squarely on the shoulders of NVIDIA's driver update team. Hurry up and give the source a read while it's still fresh, we can't imagine ATI letting this be the status quo for too much longer.
posted August 12th 2010 9:47AM
Multi-GPU support sucks!! A lot of games have worse performance with it on!
@TheCake Old games maybe so, but go to any well known site that does benchmarking and you will find that the industry has developed the multi-GPU to a point that any modern game benefits greatly from a multi GPU solution.
@walkingdogs SLI doesnt support 3D vision either
@htd
Which, you know, is probably relevant given the ubiquity of 3D monitors these days.
@htd
Because 3d pc gaming its so much more fun
@Econ
While you probably shouldn't care necessarily, there is a certain amount of the fact that the same people that buy 3D monitors probably also buy multiple graphics cards.
So you would think it would be a high priority for them to meet their top tier customers wants considering they are really the only reason the cards like the GTX 470 and 480 even sell. The vast majority of people will stop at a GTX 460 which will play games at max or nearly max on their 18-20 inch dells.
The GTX 480 gamers are few and far in between.
@d3sc3nd3ncy SLI never makes any financial sense. The $230 dollar GTX 460 is all you really need for any modern game, then in 18 months just spend 230 on the next gen equivalent card. If you sell the old card for maybe $100, you end up being able to upgrade for fairly cheap, always have a fast card, and most importantly, don't spend $500 on graphics only to discover in 18months a $200 dollar card is faster. On top of that, the power usage difference probably translates to a few dollars a month so you didn't spend just $250 dollars more, you spent closer to $300.
@nickyP
Well having two GTX 285's still will out perform a single GTX 460 in most areas. So I think that your theory goes to bust there.
However, SLI and 3-Way SLI is mainly for enthusiast (me) and high end gamers that care about every wasted second. These are the same people that RAID 0 their 6 hard drives (short stroked), have 4 24" monitors mounted and OC there i7's to 4.3GHz and OC there RAM and Graphics as well. (like me).
It's more out of sport than anything.
@corylulu
you must feel stupid for wasting all that money on a gaming PC when theres no games other than crysis/crysis2 that will even need a computer like that
@audi2009 metro 2033 is more demanding than crysis, crysis isnt that much of a demanding game since the rise of gpu,once that happened crysis wasnt, it wasnt built to run on gpu and gpu will always out do cpus
crysis is a good game tho
I always just go with who ever has the best card. No Loyalty to just one.
@Juggernaut408 Nuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
Nvidia ftw
baah baah
@Juggernaut408 ...same here. Give me stuff that works no matter what brand it is. Brand loyalty is for clingy people with no clue.
@Juggernaut408
No matter which nvidia card I've bought, I have always had driver problems, whether it be the driver just crashes or blue screens or whatever.
I got a 4870 and I haven't looked back since
@Juggernaut408 Put all the diehard Nvidia and ATI fans in one room and napalm it. I agree arguing over who has the better card is borderline insane because it alternates every month
@Juggernaut408
Yea, but the question is 'what is best?' There are a lot of ways to answer that question. I mean, the best card on the market might be the 5870x2 (Asus Ares) wihch I think are 1000 bucks a card. I'm going to guess you don't have 2 of them though.
@Juggernaut408 I always liked ATI as they seem ahead of the game, however, I do like 3D Vision for my FPS games.
@Juggernaut408 - I generally feel that way, though I still have some grudges against ATI due to some past pre-AMD buyout for bugs and support (no matter what you asked, you were basically told over and over to uninstall and reinstall the drivers w/ no care to log a possible driver bug or whatever).
Damn Nvidia, they havent given me driver updates for my card for three years!
@revoltracers
You can install new nvidia drivers for any card, just check out:
http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/topic/9243-forceware-updaters-quickstart-guide/
Quote:
nVidia drivers are based on a system called Unified Driver Architecture (UDA) which means all nVidia card drivers are using one driver. However for some reasons, they just remove the support for installing those drivers for some cards, and mostly laptop-based GO cards.
They said they tested dx11 support but never supplied us to exactly what dx11 products were used to compare. Engadget has been slacking off majorly in accurately reporting. Its not conplicated to write an article that's already been written, but when you don't question the legitimacy of the source material you're just spitting back false information.
Only 5 games support dx11 so far and none of them were even mentioned as to being tested by either of these cards...
@Gregtotheizzo Why don't you just read the actual comparison? Granted it's long, but it only takes a second to see which products were used to test dx11. Yes, engadget should have noted this in the article, but it probably took you longer to type your complaint than it would have to find the answer.
@Gregtotheizzo
It's all in the linked article dude. What do you expect, engadget to copy and paste all 11 pages onto their site? Is following the link so hard?
@i8urCookies Or sum up the last page Which says conclusions...instead of linking to 11 pages...they spend paragraphs of summing up one line articles that now with a full length report half assed it
@Gregtotheizzo
summarizing the last page wouldn't have told you which tests contained DX11 programs either, which is what you asked for. Sometimes, you just have to click the source link and actually read something.
ATI! My integrated graphics card has played everything ive thrown at it. My old dedicated Nvidia was garbage the minute we bought it. Gotta go with ATI on this one
@FlyingAero It was the exact opposite for me. I've only had bad experiences with ATI cards especially in Linux. Their Linux drivers SUCK! At least nVidia has the decency to release some half-assed, but still working Linux drivers.
@Bob the Terrorist Yeah I remember the driver for me was years old and I had to do a bunch of work to get it to play some games in ubuntu. But in windows I was pleasantly surprised that it could play mirrors edge, burnout paradise, need for speed undercover, gta IV etc.
@FlyingAero - Your new ATI is better than your old NVIDIA? Go figure! ;-)
Bottom line: ATI for video, Nvidia for games. Those have been their respective strengths over the past few years. I'm going with ATI.
Im ordering a GTX480 this afternoon, seems to be the best single gpu solution out there right now, anyone convince me of anything else before I plonk down almost $500 ??
@Firesuite
I'll try. The 460 sits around $200, while the $80 is $500. They said the 460 is the best bang-for-your-buck card, and that any of the CrossFireX/SLI combos beats any single card.
Using that logic, you could get 2 460s for $400 and outperform the $500 460. You should be getting the 1 GB card, though, which I think is slightly more, something in the $230/card range.
Even then, you are getting 2 cards for less money that outperform the one. Unless you plan to SLI the 480, there's no reason to not go dual 460s.
@Firesuite Why would you not read the before deciding this? Engadget just pointed you to a great review of the most modern cards. If your read the whole thing, you'll find that dual GTX 460's are a better value. Hell, even if you just read the conclusion you'll find that out.
@mixit If you factor in Heat, higher rated PSU to accommodate, more power = more energy used. It won't really be worth the amount you save.
@Kaggy My bad for this case the power consumption appears to be lower.
Well, I haven't read this aren't read the article; maybe this is touched on, but probably not. Just as a response to this to this particular comment, I would have to say that double-precision speed and performance in such applications as Photoshop would influence my decision, though perhaps not yours. The GTX 480 performs double-precision calculations at 1/8 the speed of single-precision (artificial limitations for the lose) while the GTX 460 performs DP calculations at 1/12 the speed of SP. In other words, if the two 460s are marginally faster than the 480, there's a good chance that the 480 can still get better DP performance.
That being said, most people buying this cards don't care about CUDA programming, or even about accelerating Adobe programs, so maybe all this is irrelevant. I would love to see an article (ideally from Anandtech) that really addressed in-depth the GPGPU capabilities of the nVidia and ATI cards on the market today.
@Firesuite I'm quite happy with my GTX480.
Also, now that Nvidia has gotten SLI efficency to 90% (near 100% in some cases). I'm looking forward to getting a cheaper 480 in the future and doubling my performance.
Wow some of you guys read FAST as hell. How do you read the source link and comment so quick. That was a few pages of Benchmarks and reports.
I just may break down and get Borderlands from Steam today
@grydlok
Not everyone reads the source link, at least, not right away.
Still, though, who honestly cares where they are positioned in an article's comments section? It's not that serious.
@grydlok wait you mean you don't own Borderlands yet? i will warn you the PC multiplayer kinda blows. other than that its a fantastic game.
@kojo87
nope never bought it. I bought Dragon's Age.
I'm a huge nVidia fan. While I don't buy the latest and fastest video cards, I do buy what I consider to be good valued cards. There's a lot more to a video card than speed. I generally prefer nVidia's driver packages, software interface, feature set, etc over ATI. I currently still have a Geforce 8800GT, which is a dinosaur by technology standards, but it may just be the last single-slot graphics card out there.
@muzicman82 I agree with you. I always used to do the switch back and forth depending on who was best at the time, but I realized that I was routinely having a more pleasant experience with nVidia cards because of the things you mention. Nowadays, I just stick with them. I know everyone says "no loyalty" in the GPU wars or whatever, but honestly, the fit and finish that nVidia has around the product is just superior to me, and it's worth it.
The majority of those benches are run at x 1080, when they figure out that they are not testing xboxes and playstations they should return with proper resolution benches for the PC user;
1600x1200 being the minimum for the 4:3 camp and 1920x1200 for the widescreen folks, never ever drop below that since it doesn't matter at all anymore.
If i see 1650x1050 or 1920x1080 one more time and it's not a notebook review i'm going to puke. The last think a PC users should do is go and buy a 16:9 monitor, if he does so, next logical step should be a H&K against the chin, 4:3 or 16:10 (8:5) is the only decent option.
Considering most televisions are 1920x1080, that's the most sensible resolution to test.
@FMinus Newegg has 47 monitors supporting 1920x1200 or 1980x1080. 40 of those are 1920x1080. there are 15 more that support 1680x1050 (which is 16:10 BTW) This is why the benchmarks are run using these resolutions. They are the most popular and common resolutions for widescreen PC monitors. And your assertion concerning aspect ratio is your opinion and we all know what opinions are like.
@person5e9
Are you really going to be hooking up your gaming rig to your TV? Seems like wasted money to me...
@walkingdogs
What is 'Blackhawks,' Alex?
@ytilanigiroon circle gets the square. Let's just hope the completely revamped Hawks can repeat this year.
@walkingdogs
I'm a Red Wings fan, but I say this in all seriousness and with no sarcasm intended: congratulations on ending the drought.