GTX 480 vs. HD 5870, 8x AA Performance Analysis, Part 3
Lost Planet
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition is a Capcom port of an Xbox 360 game. It takes place on the icy planet of E.D.N. III which is filled with monsters, pirates, big guns, and huge bosses. This frozen world highlights high dynamic range lighting (HDR) as the snow-white environment reflects blinding sunlight as DX10 particle systems toss snow and ice all around. The game looks great in both DirectX 9 and 10 and there isn’t really much of a difference between the two versions except perhaps shadows. Unfortunately, the DX10 version doesn’t look that much better when you’re actually playing the game and it still runs slower than the DX9 version.
We use the in-game performance test from the retail copy of Lost Planet and updated through Steam to the latest version for our runs. This run isn’t completely scripted as the creatures act a little differently each time you run it, requiring multiple runs. Lost Planet’s Snow and Cave demos are run continuously by the performance test and blend into each other.
Here are our benchmark results with the more demanding benchmark, Snow. All settings are fully maxed out in-game including 16xAF. Let’s start with 2560X1600 and compare the performance hit of each card when we increase the anti-aliasing from 4x to 8xAA.
We note a very tight grouping but the GeForce is beaten in the minimums and averages especially when the AA is increased to 8x. However, neither card runs this game particularly well at 2560×1600 so now we test at 1920×1200 resolution:
The Radeon is a little faster overall at 4xAA setting but it beats the GeForce in the minimums when 8xAA is applied to both cards. Finally we test at 1680×1050:
It is finally playable at 8xAA with both cards at 1680×1050 but the HD 5870 wins the duel in Lost Planet overall.
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Please take into consideration that nVidia uses a different version of AntiAliasing starting 8x and up, therefore comparisons are henceforth limited at best. Sadly I don’t have a direct link right now, but please take it into consideration before drawing (final) conclusions.
We took special care to make sure that identical AA settings were applied in all of our benchmarks including for Crysis. We even noted that in the full retail game, Just Cause 2, that we observed the benchmark results showed the Radeon was running at 8xCSAA while the GeForce was 8xAA.
However, we have since learned from AMD that the benchmark results are wrongly identifying 8xMSAA as CSAA. The Radeon is actually running 8xMSAA and this minor issue will be addressed in a future patch.
Everything we test is “apples to apple” unless it is specified in the review.
Nice article man. Cheers
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