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GTX470 Performance Test Part 2: Windows 7

Posted on by Posted in ABTnews, Articles, Technology 8 Comments



Introduction

In part 1 of this article, I compared a GTX285 to a GTX470 using Windows XP SP3 (32 bit), and I found that the GTX470 did rather poorly overall in comparison, coming off the same speed or slower in most games. So part 2 of this article will retest the GTX470 under Windows 7 (64 bit). The GTX285 has not been retested as I’m quite confident it has “gold standard” drivers on XP. For your convenience however, the GTX285’s XP results have been included in the graphs to demonstrate the reference score.

The system setup, settings and benchmarks are exactly the same as in part 1, except of course Windows 7 (64 bit) is being utilized too.

As in the last article, great care has been taken to ensure the hidden super-sampling is not affecting the scores. Many suspect Direct3D games were retested with TrAA off to ensure it wasn’t a factor. Also TrAA was off in all OpenGL games, as it was in part 1.

Also on Win7, all DX10 games were forced into DX9 render paths to ensure comparable testing, and to make sure full scene super-sampling wasn’t active. Additionally, all tests on Win7 used the 32 bit version of the games’ executables.

There are some interesting results ahead, so let’s get straight into it.


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  • Marauder

    Load up Windows 3.1 next!

    Seriously, legacy software on modern hardware? If you’re trying to point out driver issues, fine. But there are less ridiculous methods to do so other than ancient games on an obsolete operating system with seemingly random resolution/settings.

  • Pinky Floyd

    Many thanks for this BFG, supremely interesting results there! I need to go off and digest them.

    Initial impressions are that the drivers are erm….. slightly dodgy to say the least :)

  • Pinky Floyd

    XP an obselete OS? Have a look at the Steam Hardware Survey for April 2010. XP 32 bit is the most popular OS with 38% of people using it. Windows 7 is on 25%.

    Really Marauder, you should check out your figures before spouting rubbish.

  • BFG10K

    Marauder, are you saying Windows 7 (64 bit) is old? That’s the OS that this article tested, and it was released in 2009.

    As for XP, the GTX285 was the fastest card overall, and it was running on XP. So that makes it the reference score to which the GTX470 is compared to.

    I don’t know about you, but I play more than just the six cherry picked games that are constantly benchmarked by just about every website out there. I actually play these games regularly and the settings used aren’t random. In most cases they’re the settings I use when I play them.

    Call me crazy, but I actually expect a GTX470 to be faster than a GXT285. That’s why I purchased one.

  • Bo_Fox

    Wow, a breathtaking article! I still play the original Unreal Tournament using 16xS AA, forced by nhancer on WinXP. Both of my rigs have two hard drives each. Two are WinXP-32 and one is Vista x64 SP2, and the other Win7 x64. Some games just play much better on WinXP today, still.

    It’s really nice having both, but it means more maintenance (driver updating, etc..). If I wanna play DX10 games, I simply boot to Win7 and Vista (especially if playing with my friends over LAN). If it’s DX9, I’d still prefer WinXP for most games because of greater flexibility in forcing TR-SSAA, triple buffering, refresh rates, etc.. not to mention better performance in some games.

    Thank you, BFG10k.. when I own a Fermi, I’ll be sure to play Doom 3 on Win7 instead of XP!

    It just seems that GTX 470 is hampered by the reduced # of TMU’s (56 compared to 80 on the GTX 285) along with lower clock (600MHz vs 648MHz). Its memory bandwidth is also considerably lower than GTX 285′s–despite a large increase in shader units, I suspect the bandwidth is the reason why the 470 performs so much worse at 2560×1600 than at 1920×1200 when compared to GTX 285 (see xbitlab’s article).

    Keep it up and you’re making Alienbabeltech the most comprehensive and resourceful enthusiast site for GPU owners!

  • BFG10K

    Glad to see you around, Bo_Fox. Your positive comments are always nice to read. :)

    Regarding the performance issues, I don’t think they’re from architectural limitations, but mainly from drivers.

    In particular, the 16xS OpenGL games use little to no shading and are all about basic texturing and memory bandwidth, yet the GTX470 flies through the results. Also Serious Sam 2 is a texture-heavy game, but the GTX470 flies there too. There was also a lot of movement in some titles by simply using a different OS.

    Then we have really shader-heavy games like Stalker Clear Sky and Crysis, which basically showed no performance gain.

    This to me looks like driver issues, especially with regards to TrAA and non-standard AA modes.

  • http://benchmarkreviews.com Olin Coles

    I admire the effort given to test in a unique way. Sure, it’s not what everyone else is doing, but that’s why it has information that the others don’t, too.

    Posted at Benchmark Reviews: http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10576

  • BFG10K

    Olin, thanks for dropping by, and for the link @ Benchmark Reviews. :)