Vantage

Vantage is Futuremark’s DX10 test. It is epecially useful for tracking changes in a single system – especially driver changes. There are two mini-game tests, Jane Nash and Calico and also two CPU tests, but we are still focusing on the graphics performance and on Jane Nash.

Let’s go right to the graphs and first check the overall Vantage results of the default benchmark GPU Test 1 with our overclocked i7-3770K and stock GTX 680 score using the 240GB OWC Mercury EXTREME 6G SSD, the fastest SSD available to us.

Below is the benchmark’s first test, Jane Nash, run at the HD 7970 GHz edition speeds.  It is faster than the GTX 680 at 118.24 fps but it varies from run to run by about 1 fps. Remember that we are focusing in on two very specific and yet totally representative runs to give meaning to the charts.

They are very close, but the GeForce has more spikes than the Radeon. Lets’s look at the ranking chart for the GTX 680:

It appears that the Jane Nash scene has been optimized for frame rates and not for smoothness although only .1 of a percent of the time is actually spent at 39fps. Now check out the frame time chart for the HD 7970 at GHz clocks on the same OWC SSD:

The Radeon has less spikes and spends a bit less time at lower fps.  However, Jane Nash is a benchmark and not a game although it uses a real scene for benching.  Let’s move on to PC games and to mostly completely repeatable benchmarks to see if there are measurable performance differences in gaming between the GTX 680 and the HD 7970 at GHz edition clocks.