Comprehensive GPU Comparison, DX11 July 2010

[Celeras]

Seeing as these questions are asked like 3 times/day.. I thought I'd go ahead and copy/paste this as it's a goldmine of information. Hopefully it can be stickied. Source is here, trust me when I say this guy is as reputable as they come.

All the single DX11 GPU choices, as well as 5770 Crossfire and a 5970. Commencing Ctrl-C/V

http://i47.tinypic.com/bh166r.png


Okay, here is another one of my gpu comparisons just for you guys. It's pretty much a full comprehensive review of all the gpu's I could think one would upgrade to, and I hope it helps in answering a lot of questions.

Now, it's not going to be one of those lame-o stock reviews that still has you wondering about total possible performance. I will be overclocking the living piss out of these cards on the stock coolers in the most relative games I can think. I do want you to understand a couple of variables that one may encounter with my tests:

- Overclock ability from one card to the next is not identical so your frequencies will vary based on silicon quality, ambient temperatures, and cooling capacity. Again, my overclocks do not represent the maximum possible overclock for every card.

- For games that I will need to utilize fraps due to the lack of in-game benchmark the result with be slightly different. Keep in mind it's always useful to apply a certain margin of error. I usually leave around 2 percent or so before claiming any significance in power differences. Your will belief will vary from mine.

Now that we have that out of the way I'll let you get a little more intimate with the competition.

ATI

ASUS 5970

http://i50.tinypic.com/2wpt3kl.png

MSI 5870 Lightening

http://i47.tinypic.com/2ptwcq8.png

HIS 5850 Reference

http://i47.tinypic.com/2vih4xc.png

MSI 5770 Hawks (Crossfire)

http://i49.tinypic.com/315zimp.png


nVidia

ASUS GTX480

http://i50.tinypic.com/166dth4.png

PNY GTX470

http://i49.tinypic.com/4uubl1.png

ASUS GTX465

http://i45.tinypic.com/k9cdnl.png


As you can tell some of them are reference and some of them are not so also keep that in mind when overclocks are concerned. But enough about that and let me go into detail concerning the actual reason for this thread.

The test system will include:

http://i49.tinypic.com/30cvofk.png

Intel i7 980x (4.61GHz HT Off)
Corsair Dominator GTX2's
EVGA 4-Way Classified X58
Enermax EVO 1250W
Separated OS Installs to factor out driver conflicts
Samsung 2493HM - its a 1920x1200 Capable but will run tests at 1080p

Games/Benchmarks:

3DMark03
3DMark05
3DMark06
3DMark Vantage
Battlefield Bad Company 2 (fraps)
Metro 2033 (Maxed w/o Physx and fraps)
Street Fighter 4
Resident Evil 5 (Fixed Benchmark)
FarCry 2
Crysis (unmodded)
Crysis Warhead (unmodded)
Dirt 2
Hawx (10.1 enabled)
Just Cause 2
Left4Dead 2
Counter-Strike:Source
Stone Giant
Heaven 2.0 (Normal Tessellation Only)

Those will be the tests that I will be utilizing that I have at my disposal. Now this will be suicidal overclocks on the stock gpu and my only requirement to assure overclock stability is that I must complete each benchmark at the same overclock. Therefore, if a clock can run on one bench and not the other I have to run the benchmark that passes at a higher frequency lower. This is to ensure consistency in the tests.

I do want to go into detail about the benchmarks I used and the settings. Universal resolution on all benchmarks are 1920x1080 since I figured a majority of people used that resolution. The only benchmark that was run at 1920x1200 was l4d2 b/c I forgot to change that so I keep it static across all cards.

--------------------------------
Here is the list of benchmarks and settings

3dmark03 - default
3dmark05 - default
3dmark06 - default
3dmark Vantage - default no physx
AVP Benchmark - dx 11 4xAA all max
Heaven 2.0 - Default settings @ 1920x1080 with normal tessellation
Crysis - very high dx10 4xAA
Farcry2 - dx10 ultra high / max 4xAA
Dirt 2 - dx11 max and 4xAA
Stone Giant - default settings at 1920x1080 high tessellation
Resident Evil 5 - Max settings 8xAA dx10 fixed benchmark
Hawx - dx10.1 all max in game settings 8xAA
StreetFighter4 - All max settings 8xAA
Counter-strike: Source - All max settings including bloom 8xAA and max_fps 999
Just Cause 2 - All max settings minus the nvidia only functions 8xAA
Left4Dead2 - 1920x1200 all max in game and 8xAA
Metro2033 - dx11 all max in game settings minus DoF and Advanced PhysX 4xAA
Battlefield Bad Company 2 - dx11 all max 8xAA
--------------------------------
Okay before I post my graphs I would like to touch base on the gpu clocks aspect of the benching. The reference 5850 I had did not touch the same clocks as the 5870 lightning therefore I decided to experiment a little. I took a 5850 bios and flashed it to my 5870 lightning and everything worked to plan. I got the same clocks as the 5870 but with the 5850 shader count. All of these were done on stock air.

5770CF - 1055/1350
5850 - 1115/1200
5870 - 1115/1200
5970 - 1000/1200
465 - 900/2100
470 - 875/2100
480 - 900/2300

Also, on the Stone Giant benchmark I was unable to complete results with crossfire. Those results for the 5970 and 5770's were noted with 0's. The multi-gpu aspect of that particular benchmark is too bugged to consider crossfire/sli results accurate.

I will be posting the graphs shortly.
--------------------------------
3dmark03

http://www.overclock.net/gallery/data/500/3dmark031.PNG

3dmark05

http://www.overclock.net/gallery/data/500/3dmark05.PNG

3dmark06

http://www.overclock.net/gallery/data/500/3dmark06.PNG

3dmark Vantage

http://www.overclock.net/gallery/dat...arkvantage.PNG

AVP Benchmark

http://www.overclock.net/gallery/data/500/AVP.PNG

Heaven 2.0

http://www.overclock.net/gallery/data/500/heaven.PNG

Crysis

http://www.overclock.net/gallery/data/500/crysis.PNG

FarCry 2

http://www.overclock.net/gallery/data/500/fc2.PNG

Dirt 2

http://www.overclock.net/gallery/data/500/dirt2.PNG

Stone Giant

http://www.overclock.net/gallery/data/500/Stone.PNG

Resident Evil 5

http://www.overclock.net/gallery/data/500/re5.PNG

Hawx

http://www.overclock.net/gallery/data/500/hawx.PNG

Street Fighter IV

http://www.overclock.net/gallery/data/500/sf4.PNG

Counter-Strike: Source

http://www.overclock.net/gallery/data/500/css.PNG

Just Cause 2

http://www.overclock.net/gallery/data/500/JC2.PNG

Left4Dead 2

http://www.overclock.net/gallery/data/500/l4d2.PNG

Metro 2033

http://www.overclock.net/gallery/data/500/metro.PNG

Battlefield Bad Company 2

http://www.overclock.net/gallery/data/500/bc2.PNG

460 ADDED

http://i30.tinypic.com/rs7wc4.png

http://www.overclock.net/gallery/dat...ss460games.PNG

[shidobu]

should be stickied. But updated on every major release. Good find

[Kurp]

I haven't been following GPUs for months, since I'm waiting for respins/shrinks before I upgrade. Those numbers are really surprising though. Nvidia looks to have really came through with some great drivers since the initial Fermi release.

The 470 is a beast considering its price point.

The 5850 and 5870s are so similar in performance. They're only 1-3 frames apart in most of those benches. I need to look at some other reviewer's findings now as a comparison, because the price difference is huge if performance is actually that close. I wonder if the reviewer just got a bum 5870 or an excellent 5850.

[Sieg]

I haven't been following GPUs for months, since I'm waiting for respins/shrinks before I upgrade. Those numbers are really surprising though. Nvidia looks to have really came through with some great drivers since the initial Fermi release.

The 470 is a beast considering its price point.

The 5850 and 5870s are so similar in performance. They're only 1-3 frames apart in most of those benches. I need to look at some other reviewer's findings now as a comparison, because the price difference is huge if performance is actually that close. I wonder if the reviewer just got a bum 5870 or an excellent 5850.

Regarding your confusion on the 5850/5870, you probably should re-read this:

Okay before I post my graphs I would like to touch base on the gpu clocks aspect of the benching. The reference 5850 I had did not touch the same clocks as the 5870 lightning therefore I decided to experiment a little. I took a 5850 bios and flashed it to my 5870 lightning and everything worked to plan. I got the same clocks as the 5870 but with the 5850 shader count. All of these were done on stock air.

5770CF - 1055/1350
5850 - 1115/1200
5870 - 1115/1200
5970 - 1000/1200
465 - 900/2100
470 - 875/2100
480 - 900/2300

While a decent round-up of the kind of performance these individual cards get with their respective moderately-high overclocks, you shouldn't be using it for an end all apples to apples comparison.

[Celeras]

I wonder if the reviewer just got a bum 5870 or an excellent 5850.

S'typically what happens at such high clocks, and both versions were clocked at the same wall. Disparity between the two cards isn't that significant to begin with, only like 200 shader cores. I'd have a hard time saying that a 5870 that hit 1115 core on stock cooling was bum XD Frickin beast.

[Akiyama]

Sticky'd due to awesome stuff.

[Celeras]

Andd this is already outdated since the 460 is now out and cleans house. Bawww.

[Olo401]

The 460 looks REALLY impressive so far - it was targeted at beating the Radeon 5830 and some of the early test show it outpacing the 5850 in some tests. Plus power usage and heat generated are down. They really made some serious improvements on the GF104 so I hope they either switch to the new revision on the 470 & 480 or bring out "new" models.

[Akiyama]

Yeah, I was worried my HX520 520W Modular Corsair PSU wouldn't handle it, but it requires the same power supply as my HD 4850, Haha. Gonna get one of these bad boys for sure.

[Cephius]

This is gonna be outdated hella fast (in fact it kinda already is as stated already) but hopefully it should answer some questions for people planning to build a FF14 machine.

[Gethsemane]

Awesome benchmarks and thank you very much. I would have loved to see a single 5770 in there somewhere but it's cool. If you got the card still and want to do a benchmark at some point later with free time when you're bored and just post scores don't need images I'll compare to above. I got the MSi Hawk at the moment, still waiting on my parts to get here from NewEgg though. Thanks Celeras!

[Purrrfect]

Does sound like a nice card. Hopefully some prices will drop in the next month or 2 though... still holding out hope.

[Caiyuo]

This looks really great, thanks for posting this.

[Zeh]

So would it be smarter to buy a 460/465 over a 5850? Upgrading from a 4870, and don't plan to change much else of my system until I do my overhaul in ~ 2 years.

[Sieg]

The 465 is a dead card.
The other two are kinda sidegrade-ish. If you have to buy right right now, the 460 1GB is what I'd get. Otherwise, I'd wait for SI or price drops.

[Celeras]

460 ran through the gauntlet and added, single graph at the bottom of OP.

[SephYuyX]

5970 is a freaking beast lol.

[yzn]

The Geforce 470 beats the 5870 in some games

[Cray]

The Geforce 470 beats the 5870 in some games

And the 5870 beats the 470 in some games.

What's your point?

[shidobu]

And the 5870 beats the 470 in some games.

What's your point?

think he was just thinking out loud.