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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.
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 5 minutes of walking, running and combat. Famerates are measured with FRAPS and Advanced PhysX is turned off.
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,
In this short section we will be taking the results from the Heaven benchmark tests on the previous page and plotting them on a comparative graph in order to see what kind of impact tessellation has on performance.
Overall, the GTX 460 SLI setups we used provide excellent performance in Unigine with the two EVGA Superclocked cards putting their extra grunt to good work, especially at 1920 x 1200.
However, everything goes into the shitter when 2560 x 1600 comes around. Without tessellation enabled the GTX 460 SLI setup benched significantly lower than the similarly-priced pair of HD 5830s and downright refused to complete the final test with tessellation enabled. We’ll chalk this last result up to a driver bug but there is no denying the fact that NVIDIA’s $200 wunderkind gets smashed in the face at extreme resolutions.
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
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.
To some of you this section may seem to be a bit redundant and it may be just that. However, what we are trying to accomplish here is to give you a quick and easy visual representation of performance across multiple settings without using dozens of charts. In addition, these following graphs can give a user clearer insight about a product’s AA and resolution scaling with just a quick glance. Trust us; there are several interesting and eye-opening charts here that you will want to see.
Aliens Versus Predator
When AA is enabled in AvP, the GTX 460 SLI systems really push to the forefront due to the HD 5830’s inconsistent performance. However, once again the NVIDIA cards show their smaller framebuffers do tend to affect performance quite a bit at and above 2560 x 1600.
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Here we see ATI’s Crossfired HD 5830s edging out the stock clocked GTX 460 768MB SLI and literally running neck and neck with the overclocked EVGA cards. It seems like NVIDIA may have a bit more work to do on optimizations in this game but overall this is a strong showing by ATI.
DIRT 2
Dirt 2 is a game that incorporates AMD logos on the packaging as well as in numerous areas of the game itself so it is interesting to see NVIDIA solutions doing so well. That being said, we were extremely impressed with the performance of two GTX 460 cards and even more stunned by the performance from EVGA’s Superclocked cards. The only issue is that once again we see some serious performance issues when 8xAA is enabled but other than that, the GTX 460 dominates.
In what seems to be par for the course, the GTX 460 768MB dominates the ATI cards in this game, until that magical 2560 x 1600 is reached and performance plunges into the basement. For once though the NVIDIA cards keep ahead of the competition all the way until the end.
Just Cause 2
What impressed us the most about this test was the performance EVGA’s cards were able to post in relation to the stock cards. The increases in framerates is amazing to say the least.
Metro 2033
As usual, Metro 2033 eats GPUs for breakfast and spits out the pieces in short order. There are no real surprises here other than the larger memory size on the ATI cards only coming into play at a slightly higher resolution.
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.
Our thoughts regarding the temperatures and noise envelopes of the cards have not changed since our original GTX 460 review. The cards are whisper quiet even at full load and heat is kept well in check in even the most demanding of situations.
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.
Power consumption for the new GF104 is simply excellent and even when in an SLI configuration; the 768MB cards draw significantly less power than a GTX 480. Comparing this to a pair of HD 5830 cards really does put NVIDIA’s latest mid-range card’s efficiency into perspective as well even though the more powerful HD 5850 Crossfire consumes about the same amount. EVGA’s GTX 460 Superclocked’s speeds do tend to bump up the numbers but not by a significant amount.
Along with MSI’s Afterburner software, EVGA’s Precision is known as one of the most versatile and user friendly programs around when it comes to overclocking NVIDIA cards. Not only does it allow for real-time monitoring of clock speeds, temperatures, fan speed and other parameters but it also offers robust clock speed adjustments. For the GTX 400-series, EVGA has included customized skins which are specific to every GPU.
The EVGA OC Scanner meanwhile is currently only available to those of you who own EVGA GTX 400-series products and register them but the functionality it offers is currently unparalleled. Included is a benchmarking and stress testing utility with artifact scanning capability in order for you to test the stability of any overclock done in Precision. It also allows for unlocking of the GTX 400-series’ power consumption characteristics so the card can draw more power than the usual limiters will allow it to. This could in effect push overclocks to stratospheric levels if the right cooling and power supply is used.
Unfortunately, this utility’s scanning function does not yet properly load two GTX 460 cards in SLI as the profiles for the OpenGL 4.0 renderer have yet to be created. Let’s hope this gets done soon.
