Introducing Nvidia’s GTX 580 – Fermi Improved!
Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2
(–the full retail DX11 game)
Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 is as yet an unreleased air combat video game developed which is soon to be published by Ubisoft for PC. It will be released later on this week but the game details remain under NDA for now. We are using the built-in benchmark from the full retail game. The way tessellation is implemented shows AMD graphics cards are perhaps unnaturally slow compared to other DX11 titles. Unfortunately, AMD is still working on a driver-based solution in time for the final release of the game that they claim improves performance without sacrificing image quality. When we get that new driver, we shall update our results here and also in a short performance H.A.W.X. 2 performance analysis.
H.A.W.X. 2 runs on DX11 faster and with more detail than on the DX10 pathway. Here the emphasis is on terrain tessellation which looks outstanding in DX11 and “flat” in DX10. Let’s check out H.A.W.X. 2 with our video cards at 2560×1600 with fully maxed out in-game settings and with 8xAA:
And now we test at 1920×1200 resolution:
We see the GTX 580 at stock clocks even beating the highly overclocked GTX 480. However, even with unoptimized drivers, the two Radeons can play this game maxed out. We also see that the HD 6870, although generally slower than the HD 5870, is much faster in this tessellation-heavy game.
Amazing review guys, I wonder if I can evolve my GTX 480 to 580 using EVGA’s RMA process. I need maor powah!!!
I think this is the best GTX 580 review I’ve seen on the net! And I’ve read almost all of them. Thanks for testing so many game titles and especially DX9 titles. I still run XP, so it’s important for me to see how the card did in them. Most reviews only have one or two DX9 games tested, some don’t have any. After reading this review I made up my mind about getting this card. Thanks!
Oh, and I forgot to ask: please use same titles when reviewing the upcoming HD 6970. Thanks!
I had 3 580 GTX’s in my system using a Core i7 980x, and it crashed during minesweeper.
How did it go with the step up program?
Thanks for the kind words. And I generally use the same titles and same settings for the high end cards.
I will be very busy for the next few days.
A very comprehensive review.
It seems that Nvidia has upped its game. I’ve always preferred single GPU solutions over SLI or Crossfire, as have many others, although right now this is out of my budget. It exceeded expectations – cooler and faster. I wonder what AMD’s response will be like.