discussion EVGA Geforce GTX 570 Superclocked Review

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BattleField: Bad Company 2 (DX11)

BattleField: Bad Company 2 (DX11)

To benchmark BF: BC2 we used a five minute stretch of gameplay starting from the second checkpoint (after the helicopter takes off) of the second single player mission up until your battle with the tank commences. Framerates are recorded with FRAPS.


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DiRT 2 (DX11)

DiRT 2 (DX11)

Being one of the newest games on the market, DiRT 2 cuts an imposing figure in terms of image quality and effects fidelity. We find that to benchmark this game the in-game tool is by far the best option. However, due to small variances from one race to another, three benchmark runs are done instead of the normal two. It should also be mentioned that the demo version of the game was NOT used since after careful testing, the performance of the demo is not representative of the final product. DX11 was forced through the game’s config file. In addition, you will see that these scores do not line up with our older benchmarks at all. This is due to the fact that a patch was recently rolled out for the game which included performance optimizations in addition to new graphics options.


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F1 2010 (DX11)

F1 2010 (DX11)

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Just Cause 2 (DX10)

Just Cause 2 (DX10)

Just Cause 2 has quickly become known as one of the best-looking games on the market and while it doesn’t include DX11 support, it uses the full stable of DX10 features to deliver a truly awe-inspiring visual experience. For this benchmark we used the car chase scene directly following the Casino Assault level. This scene includes perfectly scripted events, some of the most GPU-strenuous effects and lasts a little less than four minutes. We chose to not use the in-game benchmarking tool due to its inaccuracy when it comes to depicting actual gameplay performance.


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Lost Planet 2 (DX11)

Lost Planet 2 (DX11)

Lost Planet is a game that was originally released on consoles but in its port over to the PC, it gained some highly impressive DX11 features. For this benchmark, we forgo the two built-in tools and instead use a 2 minute gameplay sequence from the second level in the first chapter. The reason we use this level is because it makes use of three elements that are seen throughout the game world: jungles, water and open terrain.


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Metro 2033 (DX11)

Metro 2033 (DX11)

There has been a lot of buzz about Metro 2033 which has mostly centered on its amazing graphics coupled with absolutely brutal framerates on even the best GPUs on the market. For this test we use a walkthrough and combat scene from The Bridge level which starts at the beginning of the level and lasts for about 3 minutes of walking, running and combat. Famerates are measured with FRAPS and Advanced PhysX is turned off.


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Unigine: Heaven v2.0 (DX11)

Unigine: Heaven v2.0 (DX11)

Unigine’s Heaven benchmark is currently the de-facto standard when it comes to simple, straightforward DX11 performance estimates. While it is considered a synthetic benchmark by many, it is important to remember that no less than four games based on this engine will be released within the next year or so. In this test we will be using a standard benchmark run with and without tessellation enabled at three resolutions. Note that tessellation IS NOT set to extreme.


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8x MSAA Testing

8x MSAA Testing

In this section we take a number of games we have tested previously in this review and bring things to the next level by pushing the in-game MSAA up to 8x. All other methodologies remain the same.


BattleField: Bad Company 2 (DX11)

Note that 8x MSAA is enabled via the game’s config file for the NVIDIA cards since it is not a selectable option within the game menu

Dirt 2 (DX11)

F1 2010 (DX11)

Just Cause 2 (DX10)

 

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Temperature & Acoustics / Power Consumption

Core Temperature & Acoustics

For all temperature testing, the cards were placed on an open test bench with a single 120mm 1200RPM fan placed ~8” away from the heatsink. The ambient temperature was kept at a constant 22°C (+/- 0.5°C). If the ambient temperatures rose above 23°C at any time throughout the test, all benchmarking was stopped. For this test we use the 3DMark Batch Size test at it highest triangle count with 4xAA and 16xAF enabled and looped it for one hour to determine the peak load temperature as measured by GPU-Z.

For Idle tests, we let the system idle at the Windows 7 desktop for 15 minutes and recorded the peak temperature.

While EVGA has stringently adhered to the reference design, they have also implemented a slightly more aggressive fan speed profile. The result is lower temperatures without a noticeable increase in overall noise.

System Power Consumption

For this test we hooked up our power supply to a UPM power meter that will log the power consumption of the whole system twice every second. In order to stress the GPU as much as possible we once again use the Batch Render test in 3DMark06 and let it run for 30 minutes to determine the peak power consumption while letting the card sit at a stable Windows desktop for 30 minutes to determine the peak idle power consumption. We have also included several other tests as well.

Please note that after extensive testing, we have found that simply plugging in a power meter to a wall outlet or UPS will NOT give you accurate power consumption numbers due to slight changes in the input voltage. Thus we use a Tripp-Lite 1800W line conditioner between the 120V outlet and the power meter.

With higher clock speeds comes higher power consumption but in this case the overall impact isn’t all that extreme.

 

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Overclocking Results

Overclocking Results

EVGA provides two pieces of software that can become invaluable to overclockers: Precision and OC Scanner. Precision can be accessed for both registered and non-registered customers while the OC Scanner is only available to people who register their cards. Together, Precision and OC Scanner allow you to both overclock and scan for possible stability issues which makes finding that perfect balance of increase clock speeds and playability quite easy.

Using these two EVGA-provided tools we were able to push the clock speeds of this card to levels that had a significant impact upon overall in-game framerates.


Core Speed: 874Mhz
Processor Clock: 1748Mhz
Memory Speed: 4216Mhz (QDR)