{"id":16997,"date":"2010-04-12T09:57:51","date_gmt":"2010-04-12T08:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=16997"},"modified":"2011-06-14T04:24:26","modified_gmt":"2011-06-14T03:24:26","slug":"gtx-480-8001100-mhz-vs-hd-5870-9751300-mhz-overclocked-performance-analysis-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/gtx-480-8001100-mhz-vs-hd-5870-9751300-mhz-overclocked-performance-analysis-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"GTX 480 (825\/1100 MHZ) vs. HD 5870 (975\/1300 MHz), Overclocked Performance Analysis, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/ <![CDATA[\n                 google_ad_client = \"pub-7021221536180758\"; \/* 468x60, created 11\/11\/09 *\/ google_ad_slot = \"1949837292\"; google_ad_width = 468; google_ad_height = 60;\n\/\/ ]]><\/script> <script src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">NVIDIA has released its long awaited GeForce GTX based on its brand new Fermi DX11 GF100 architecture just over two weeks ago.\u00a0 We were able to bring you Part One of our GTX 480 series, <em>&#8220;NVIDIA&#8217;s GTX 480 Performance Testing&#8221;<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=16475\">here<\/a>.\u00a0 We now have had two weeks hand&#8217;s on experience testing GTX 480 versus HD 5870 and we have learned quite a bit more that we would like to share with you.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">In Part One, we learned that the GTX 480 does indeed overclock. \u00a0 We were able to get it stably up from its stock clocks of 700\/924 MHz to 825\/1100!\u00a0 So now, for Part Two, we will compare the performance of our overclocked GTX 480 (825\/1100MHz) to our overclocked HD 5870 (975\/1300MHz) and we have added one more benchmark.\u00a0 In Part Three, we will look at the relative performance hit of 8xMSAA over 4xMSAA on each card, and we shall continue to add games as we progress through this series of GTX 480 vs. HD 5870 exploring the features of each video card on our adventure.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/gtx480-003.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-17215\" title=\"gtx480-003\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/gtx480-003.jpg?resize=300%2C154\" alt=\"gtx480-003\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/gtx480-003.jpg?resize=300%2C154 300w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/gtx480-003-1024x526.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/gtx480-003.jpg 1692w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">In Part One, we compared the relative performance of 5 GPUs &#8211; GTX 480, GTX 280, HD 5870, HD 4870-X2 and HD 4870.\u00a0 GTX 480 won most of the benchmarks just over HD 5870, followed by HD-4870-X2.\u00a0 HD 4870 and GTX 280 were left in the DX10 dust while the DX11 cards showed their advantages over a dual-GPU flagship card of the last generation.\u00a0 This time, we will only be comparing HD 5870 to GTX 480 and we shall overclock them each as far as we can.\u00a0 We do want to note that we did not overclock the GTX 480&#8217;s shader clocks for this review as they cannot be adjusted in the competing card.\u00a0 However, you can expect even further performance improvement by doing so.\u00a0 In a later part of this series and after we get WHQL drivers for GTX 480, we shall also overclock the shaders to further explore this new GF100 GeForce architecture in gaming.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">We are also going to revisit the &#8220;Power Usage&#8221; section as befits overclocking in this review.\u00a0 We have heard back from NVIDIA about the apparent discrepancy between the published TDP specification of 250 W &#8220;Maximum Board Power&#8221; and the near-300 W power draw that we observed with our own GTX 480 and what has been confirmed by other reviewers.\u00a0 NVIDIA has finally clarified how they determine their published &#8220;Maximum Board Power&#8221; (TDP) specifications for their graphics cards!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">AMD has already launched its entire 5000 DX11 series from top to bottom &#8211; $600 for their dual-GPU HD 5970 down to their passive-cooled HD 5450 for $60. To compete, NVIDIA has launched its new DX11 GeForce lineup with its GTX 480 flagship and second-fastest card, the GTX 470. The GTX 480 comes with a MSRP of $499 and the GTX470 retails for $349. We still need to answer the question: <em>Is it worth the $100 premium over the $400 that one would currently spend for AMD&#8217;s top single-GPU video card &#8211; HD 5870?<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">That question is important because we expect that NVIDIA will shortly launch it&#8217;s own entire DX11 line-up based on their GF100 &#8220;Fermi&#8221; architecture.\u00a0 We expect to see GTX 460 and 450 launch within a few months and we need to see what this new GF 100 Fermi architecture brings over their GT200b series besides DX11 and a smaller process.<em> <\/em>Overclocking our GTX 480 may give us some idea of future GF100 core scalability as NVIDIA refines their process to perhaps bringing out an &#8220;Ultra&#8221; version of GTX 480 with all 512 CUDA cores enabled and with perhaps a higher clock than what we achieved with our own 480-core GTX 480 for this review.<em> <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">To properly bring you this review, we purchased a Diamond HD 5870 from NewEgg and put it through its paces with the very latest performance drivers &#8211; Catalyst 10-3a. AMD is quite proud of this driver set as it brings sold performance increases over Catalyst 10-2 and over even the latest WHQL drivers, Catalyst 10-3, which were released two weeks ago. The results would be more in NVIDIA&#8217;s favor if we used the last Catalyst 10-2 driver set or even the current WHQL Catalyst 10-3 drivers. Also, remember that AMD has had a long time to mature their drivers and that the release GTX 480 GeForce 197.17 drivers that we are still using are beta &#8220;release drivers&#8221; and they should leave some room for improvement by NVIDIA&#8217;s GeForce driver team in the months to come.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Today you will see us pit our Diamond reference design HD 5870 which is now overclocked from 850\/1200 to 975\/1300 MHz against the new GTX 480 which is overclocked to 825\/1100 MHz from 700\/924 MHz.\u00a0 We continue to benchmark with 14 modern games and with 3 synthetic benchmarks ranging from 1680&#215;1050 to 1920&#215;1200 to 2560&#215;1600 resolutions and with details fully maxed and with 4xAA\/16xAF.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/5870_480.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-16439\" title=\"5870_480\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/5870_480.jpg?resize=300%2C222\" alt=\"5870_480\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/5870_480.jpg?resize=300%2C222 300w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/5870_480.jpg 850w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: left;\">Is GTX 480 worth nearly $100 more than its rival, AMD&#8217;s HD 5870?<\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">We were not able to fully answer that question in Part One of our GTX 480 performance evaluation even though we declared the GTX 480 the performance winner.\u00a0 This review is continuing on as a series and we believe that we have a much clearer picture now. Part One analyzed and compared the stock GTX 480 to the stock HD 5870 performance and the performance winner was the GTX 480, but not overwhelmingly so. Later on, we will also look at the individual features of each video card to see what else the new NVIDIA GPU brings to the table and if it is worth the nearly $100 premium over its AMD counterpart. We learned that AMD is immediately going to respond to NVIDIA&#8217;s GTX 480\/470 Fermi GF100 launch by allowing their partners to overclock the current HD 5870.<\/p>\n<p>Here is AMD&#8217;s not-so-secret weapon and notice the free down-loadable copy of <em>Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2<\/em> bundled in with the PowerColor HD 5870 PCS+ as an incentive.\u00a0 PowerColor HD 5870+ is a mildly overclocked version of our reference HD 5870; 875\/1225 MHz up +25 MHz on each the core and memory clock.\u00a0 Worthy of note especially for smaller cases, the PowerColor HD 5870 PCS+ PCB is shorter and wider than reference and the cooling solution is both quieter and more effective than the reference cooling solution.<\/p>\n<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/newweaponoc.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-16440\" title=\"NewWeaponOC\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/newweaponoc.jpg?resize=246%2C300\" alt=\"NewWeaponOC\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/newweaponoc.jpg?resize=246%2C300 246w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/newweaponoc-841x1023.jpg 841w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/newweaponoc.jpg 1198w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 246px) 100vw, 246px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Widespread e-tail availability of both GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 will happen this coming week of April 12, 2010. So you still have a little time to decide what to do and this review is designed to help you with an important potential upgrade. NVIDIA says that they are building tens of thousands of units for initial availability, and this will ensure that their partners have ample volume for what is certainly one of the most anticipated GPU launches ever.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">We already pointed out in Part 1 that it is practical to upgrade from HD 4870\/GTX 280 class &#8211; which includes GTX 260, 275 and by extension, GTX 285. We also discovered that it is also logical to upgrade to DX11 from a HD 4870-X2 or HD 4870 CrossFire, or by extension, GTX 260 or 275 SLI or even a GTX 295 which is a bit more powerful than our HD 4870-X2. Since we do not want any <em>chance<\/em> of our CPU &#8220;bottlenecking&#8221; our graphics, we continue testing both of our graphics cards with our Intel Core i7 920 at 3.80 GHz (3.97 GHz effectively with the 21x multiplier in turbo mode), 6 GB Kingston DDR3 and a Gigabyte X58 full 16x + 16x PCIe CrossFire\/SLI motherboard. <img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Next page...\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-includes\/js\/tinymce\/plugins\/wordpress\/img\/trans.gif?w=720\" alt=\"\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Later on we plan to also test our AMD DX11 video cards on AMD&#8217;s Dragon platform. We also acquired a brand new ECS black label A890GXM-A CrossFire motherboard which is a nice performance upgrade from our current Gigabyte 790X motherboard and we shall post that review early this week.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><!--pagetitle: Introduction--><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong>Overclocking and Temperatures <\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Each of our competing video cards was overclocked as far as it could go without exceeding the core voltage or thermals so as to throttle the respective GPUs.\u00a0 We got 100% stability from each of our GPUs at the noise-expense of running their cooling fans near 90%.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">We used MSI&#8217;s Afterburner to overclock our reference Diamond HD 5870 to 975\/1300 MHz &#8211; a solid overclock of +125 MHz on the core and +100 MHz on the vRAM.\u00a0 Correspondingly, we overclocked the GTX 480 with EVGA&#8217;s tool to 825\/1100 from 700\/924 MHz &#8211; another solid overclock which was coincidentally also +125 MHz on the core; however, we managed +176MHz on the GTX 480&#8217;s vRAM.\u00a0 We did not attempt to adjust the GTX 480 shader clock which would give us a further performance increase.\u00a0 Here is the EVGA overclock tool showing stock clocks; note the fan speed.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-18076\" title=\"OC_ToolSTOCK\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/oc_toolstock.PNG?resize=400%2C215\" alt=\"OC_ToolSTOCK\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/oc_toolstock.PNG?resize=400%2C215 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/oc_toolstock-300x161.PNG 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Now we see our maximum overclock and note the fan speed is now set at 90% as we finally settled on 1650\/2200 MHz (825\/1100 MHz) with stock voltage.\u00a0 We had to do the same thing with HD 5870&#8217;s fan when we overclocked it to 975\/1300 MHz and upped its core voltage to 1.35V.\u00a0 The fan noise of either video card is intolerable and we might suggest water cooling or a better aftermarket air cooler if you are going to push your GPU to a near-extreme overclock.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/OCD_GTX1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17218\" title=\"OCD_GTX\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/OCD_GTX1.jpg?resize=400%2C220\" alt=\"OCD_GTX\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/OCD_GTX1.jpg?resize=400%2C220 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/OCD_GTX1-300x165.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Temperatures remained well within the each card&#8217;s specifications and no throttling was noted.\u00a0 Both fans were set at 90% each to insure thermal stability and most of the testing proceeded in a warm room with ambient temperatures of 76-80 F; rather warm.\u00a0 Each card was stable at their respective overclock and no issues were noted with either card.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Both cards are very noisy with fans set at 90%; it would be intolerable under gaming conditions without headphones.\u00a0 However, we wanted to test a near-maximum overclock of each card.\u00a0 The Diamond HD 5870 actually overclocked further than our PowerColor HD 5870 PCS+ (1325\/1300 MHz) because the PowerColor is a non-reference design with a shorter and wider PCB than the reference, but it also lacks voltage adjustments.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">We eventually settled on 1.35V for the Diamond HD 5870; the highest voltage allowed by the MSI Afterburner overclocking tool; we could not pass beyond 975 MHz on the core, but it is still a good overclock over the stock core clock of 850 MHz.\u00a0 1300 MHz seems to be the upper limit of the GDDR5 that is used in both of our HD 5870s.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">No voltage adjustments were done on our GTX 480 as it already ran pretty warm with stock voltage.\u00a0 You could probably push it further with a better cooling solution than the reference fan but it still managed a nice overclock from 700 MHz on the core to 825 MHz.\u00a0 The GTX 480&#8217;s vRAM was able to overclock from 924 MHz to 1100 MHz; not bad!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Make sure you check out the revised Power Usage section later on in this same review which revisits and explains how NVIDIA measures the GTX 470\/480 TDP and perhaps explains the apparent discrepancy between the published specification of 250 W &#8220;maximum board power&#8221; and what we and other reviewers observed and measured.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Ok, let&#8217;s look at our test bed for both of these overclocked cards.<\/p>\n<p><!--pagetitle: Overclocking and temperatures--><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium\"><span style=\"font-size: large\"><span style=\"color: #ffff00\"><strong>Test Configuration<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/span> <span style=\"color: #ffff00\"><strong> <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium\"><span style=\"color: #ffff00\"><strong>Test Configuration &#8211; Hardware <\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<ul style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small\">Intel Core i7 920 reference 2.66 GHz and overclocked to 3.8 GHz); Turbo (21X multiplier for 3.97 GHz of a single core) is on. <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small\">Gigabyte <\/span>EX58-UD3R <span style=\"font-size: small\">(Intel X58 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 2.0 specification; CrossFire\/SLI 16x+16x).<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small\">6 GB OCZ DDR3 PC 18000 Kingston RAM (3&#215;2 GB, tri-channel at PC 16000 speeds; 2&#215;2 GB supplied by Kingston)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small\">NVIDIA GTX 480, reference design (supplied by NVIDIA under NDA)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small\">ATI Radeon HD 5870 (2GB, reference clocks) by Diamond<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small\">Onboard Realtek Audio<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small\">Two identical 250 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 hard drives configured and set up identically from drive image; one partition for NVIDIA GeForce drivers and one for ATI Catalyst drivers<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small\">SilentPro 600 M power supply unit supplied by Cooler Master<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small\">Cooler Master Gladiator 600 Case supplied by Cooler Master<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small\">Noctua UD CPU cooler, supplied by Noctua<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small\">Five Case fans by Cooler Master and Noctua<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small\">Philips DVD SATA writer<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small\">HP LP3065 2560&#215;1600 thirty inch LCD<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium\"><strong><span style=\"color: #ffff00\">Test Configuration &#8211; Software<\/span><\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small\">ATi Catalyst 10-3a; highest quality mip-mapping set in the driver, Catalyst AI set to \u201cStandard\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small\">NVIDIA GeForce 197.13 WHQL for GTX 280 and 197.17 beta release drivers for GTX 480; High Quality<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small\">Windows 7 64-bit; very latest updates<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small\">DirectX February 2010<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small\">All games are patched to their latest versions.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small\">vsync is off in the control panel and is never set in-game.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small\">4xAA enabled in all games and &#8220;forced&#8221; in Catalyst Control Center for<em> UT3<\/em>; all in-game settings at &#8220;maximum&#8221; or &#8220;ultra&#8221; with 16xAF always applied; 16xAF forced in control panel <em>Crysis.<\/em><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small\">All results show average, minimum and maximum frame rates except as noted.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small\">Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small\">Windows 7 64, all DX10 titles were run under DX10 render paths; DX11 titles under DX 11 render paths except for <em>Dirt 2<\/em> demo in DX9c.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong><span style=\"font-size: medium\"><strong><span style=\"color: #ffff00\">The Benchmarks<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/strong><strong><span style=\"font-size: medium\"> <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>\u2022Vantage <em> <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><em>\u2022Call of Juarez <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><em>\u2022Crysis <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><em>\u2022S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Call of Pripyat <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><em>\u2022Far Cry 2<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><em> \u2022World in Conflict<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><em> \u2022X3:Terran Conflict <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><em>\u2022Dirt 2 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><em>\u2022Left4Dead <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><em>\u2022Lost Planet <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><em>\u2022Unreal Tournament 3 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><em>\u2022Resident Evil 5 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><em> \u2022ARMA2 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><em>\u2022H.A.W.X. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><em>\u2022Battleforge<\/em> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>\u2022Heaven 1.0 (Unigine)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong> \u2022Heaven 2.0 (Unigine)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">We have added Heaven 2.0 as a third synthetic benchmark as it uses extreme shaders and it may well portend the future of games with DX11&#8217;s most noticeable feature over DX10, tessellation.\u00a0 In fact, the Unigine Engine will be the basis for at least two new DX11 games this year, one of which is <em>Primal Carnage<\/em> &#8211; a dinosaur game.\u00a0 For Part Three of this series, we will also add <em>Just Cause 2<\/em> as a game benchmark and perhaps revisit some of our older games as we explore the performance hit of 8xMSAA over 4x with both of our current competing video cards.  Let&#8217;s move on to Vantage and then 14 more games as well as Unigine benchmarks as we explore the scaling of the GTX 480 versus HD 5870 as they are overclocked.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong> <\/strong> <!--pagetitle: Test Configuration--><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><strong>Vantage<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">Vantage is Futuremark\u2019s latest test. It is really useful for tracking changes in a<em> single <\/em>system \u2013 especially driver changes. There are two mini-game tests, <em>Jane Nash<\/em> and <em>Calico<\/em> and also two CPU tests, but we are still focusing on the graphics performance. Here is a scene from Vantage\u2019s second mini-game.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/3dmarkvantage-jpg.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px\" title=\"3DMarkVantage\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/3dmarkvantage_thumb-jpg.jpg?resize=244%2C154\" border=\"0\" alt=\"3DMarkVantage\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Let\u2019s go right to the graphs and first check the basic tests with the default benchmark scores:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/VantageBT1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17030\" title=\"VantageBT\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/VantageBT1.jpg?resize=400%2C416\" alt=\"VantageBT\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/VantageBT1.jpg?resize=400%2C416 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/VantageBT1-288x300.jpg 288w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">We see an interesting lineup. However, it is a meaningless test with meaningless numbers to compare one video card&#8217;s performance to another.\u00a0 In contrast, the mini games just might show a bit more as they are actually benching framerates.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/vantagemg.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17031\" title=\"VantageMG\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/vantagemg.jpg?resize=400%2C416\" alt=\"VantageMG\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/vantagemg.jpg?resize=400%2C416 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/vantagemg-288x300.jpg 288w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Here we see the GTX 480 ranked below the HD 5870 at stock speeds but moves ahead when both are overclocked to their individual maximums. Let&#8217;s move on to PC games and to real world situations to see if this is a trend or not.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><!--pagetitle: Vantage--><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em><strong>Call of Juarez<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/coj_dx10-jpg.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px\" title=\"CoJ_DX10\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/coj_dx10_thumb-jpg.jpg?resize=244%2C154\" border=\"0\" alt=\"CoJ_DX10\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Call of Juarez<\/em> is one of the very earliest DX10 games. It is loosely based on Spaghetti Westerns that became popular in the early 1970s. Call of Juarez features its Chrome Engine using Shader Model 4 with DirectX 10.<\/p>\n<p>Our benchmark isn\u2019t built into Call of Juarez, but is an official stand-alone that is identical to the one that is built-into the game. It runs a simple flyby of a level that is created to showcase its DX10 effects. It offers good repeatability and it is a good stress test for DX10 features in graphics cards, although it is not quite the same as actual gameplay because the game logic and AI are stripped out of this demo.<\/p>\n<p>Performing <em>Call of Juarez<\/em> benchmark is easy. You are presented with a simple menu to choose resolution, anti-aliasing, and two choices of shadow quality options. We set the shadow quality on \u201chigh\u201d and the shadow map resolution to the maximum, 2048\u00d72048. At the end of the run, the demo presents you with the minimum, maximum, and average frame rate, along with the option to quit or run the benchmark again. We always ran the benchmark at least a second time and recorded that generally higher score.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em> <\/em>Here are <em>Call of Juarez<\/em> DX10 benchmark results at 1920\u00d71200:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/coj-19.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17032\" title=\"CoJ-19\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/coj-19.jpg?resize=396%2C494\" alt=\"CoJ-19\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/coj-19.jpg?resize=396%2C494 550w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/coj-19-240x300.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 396px) 100vw, 396px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">This time the overclocked GTX 480 takes a solid lead and we notice a bigger performance gap over the HD 5870 even when they are both overclocked.\u00a0 Now on to 1650&#215;1080 resolution:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/coj-16.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17033\" title=\"CoJ-16\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/coj-16.jpg?resize=400%2C498\" alt=\"CoJ-16\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/coj-16.jpg?resize=400%2C498 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/coj-16-240x300.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">Our top cards are almost wasted on <em>Call of Juarez<\/em> at 1680&#215;1050 resolution. This is so different from when <em>Call of Juarez<\/em> was first released as it was almost a slide show on the fastest cards of just three and a half years ago.\u00a0 We will next be looking to add 8xAA at our testing resolutions to see the relative performance hit to each card over 4xAA. At any rate, the overclocked GTX 480 is the clear winner.<!--nextpage--><!--pagetitle: Call of Juarez--><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: left;\"><em><strong>CRYSIS<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/crysis64_1-jpg.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px\" title=\"crysis64_1\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/crysis64_1_thumb-jpg.jpg?resize=244%2C154\" border=\"0\" alt=\"crysis64_1\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">Next we move on to <em>Crysis,<\/em> a science fiction first person shooter by Crytek. It remains one of the most demanding games for any PC and it is also still one of the most beautiful games released to date. <em>Crysis <\/em>is based in a fictional near-future where an alien spacecraft is discovered buried on an island near the coast of Korea. The single-player campaign has you assume the role of USA Delta Force, \u2018Nomad\u2019 who is armed with futuristic weapons and equipment.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em>Crysis<\/em> uses DirectX10 for graphics rendering. A standalone but related game, <em>Crysis Warhead<\/em> was released last year. CryEngine2 is the game engine used to power <em>Crysis<\/em> and <em>Warhead <\/em>and it is an extended version of the CryEngine that also powers <em>FarCry<\/em>. As well as supporting Shader Model 2.0, 3.0, and DirectX10\u2019s 4.0, CryEngine2 is also multi-threaded to take advantage of dual core SMP-aware systems and Crytek has developed their own proprietary physics system, called CryPhysics. However, it is noted that actually playing this game is a bit slower than the demo implies.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><em><strong>G<\/strong><strong>PU Demo, Island<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">All of our settings are set to maximum &#8220;very high&#8221; including 4xAA and we force 16xAF in the control panels. Here is<em> Crysis\u2019 Island Demo <\/em>benchmark, first at 2560&#215;1600 resolution:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/crysis-25.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17034\" title=\"Crysis-25\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/crysis-25.jpg?resize=400%2C498\" alt=\"Crysis-25\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/crysis-25.jpg?resize=400%2C498 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/crysis-25-240x300.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">Crysis at 2560&#215;1600 still requires at least multi-GPU to play smoothly. At stock clocks, HD 5870 and GTX 480 are pretty much neck-and-neck overall although the Radeon will slightly stumble at times. Perhaps the larger framebuffer of the GTX makes a difference. Overclocked, the GTX pulls away from the Radeon.\u00a0 Neither of our overclocked video cards played this game at maximum resolution particularly well; not even without AA\/AF &#8211; but this time the overclocked\u00a0 GTX 480 pulls slightly ahead of the overclocked HD 5870; a change from the ranking of their stock clocks.\u00a0 GTX 480 appears to scale a bit better as it is overclocked.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Let&#8217;s move on to 1920&#215;1200:<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/crysis-19.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17035\" title=\"Crysis-19\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/crysis-19.jpg?resize=400%2C498\" alt=\"Crysis-19\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/crysis-19.jpg?resize=400%2C498 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/crysis-19-241x300.jpg 241w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">This time the performance is closer.\u00a0 Both of our top cards are now playable with Crysis at 1920&#215;1200 if you are willing to compromise with AA\/AF or lower a couple of detail settings. This time the overclocked GTX 480 catches the overclocked HD 5870 and edges it slightly performance-wise in the averages; a subtle change in ranking from their stock clocks.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/crysis-16.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17036\" title=\"Crysis-16\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/crysis-16.jpg?resize=400%2C498\" alt=\"Crysis-16\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/crysis-16.jpg?resize=400%2C498 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/crysis-16-240x300.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">The Radeon HD 5870 is slightly faster than the GeForce GTX 480 when both are stock clocked in <em>Crysis<\/em>.\u00a0 When they are both overclocked, the GTX is now a bit faster in the minimums and averages.\u00a0 We might also point out that the new GTX 480 is still running on beta release 197.17 drivers while the AMD cards have mature drivers in Catalyst 10-3a. We will revisit this benchmark every month in our Catalyst and GeForce driver performance analysis and report any changes that we may find.<\/p>\n<p><!--pagetitle: Crysis--><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<ul style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<h2><em><strong>FarCry 2<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/farcry2-jpg.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px\" title=\"farcry2\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/farcry2_thumb-jpg.jpg?resize=244%2C154\" border=\"0\" alt=\"farcry2\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/ul>\n<p><em>F<\/em><em>ar Cry 2 <\/em>uses the name of the original <em>Far Cry <\/em>but it is not connected to the first game as it brings you a new setting and a new story. Ubisoft created it based on their Dunia Engine. The game setting takes place in an unnamed African country, during an uprising between two rival warring factions<em>.<\/em> Your mission is to kill \u201cThe Jackal\u201d; the Nietzsche-quoting mercenary that arms both sides of the conflict that you are dropped into.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Far Cry 2 <\/em>game world is loaded in the background and on the fly to create a completely seamless open world. The Dunia game engine provides good visuals that scale well. The<em> Far Cry 2<\/em> design team actually went to Africa to give added realism to this game. One thing to especially note is <em>Far Cry 2\u2019s <\/em>very realistic fire propagation by their engine that is a far cry from the scripted fire and explosions that we are used to seeing.<\/p>\n<p>First let&#8217;s check out 2560&#215;1600:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/fc2-25.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17037\" title=\"FC2-25\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/fc2-25.jpg?resize=400%2C499\" alt=\"FC2-25\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/fc2-25.jpg?resize=400%2C499 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/fc2-25-240x300.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Here the GTX 480 takes an even more commanding lead over the HD 5870 when they both are overclocked.\u00a0 Clearly the GTX 480 runs away from the HD 5870 at our highest resolutions.\u00a0 Now we test <em>Far Cry 2<\/em> benchmark at 1920\u00d71200 \u2013 all of the resolutions that we test are with AI enabled.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/FC2-191.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17039\" title=\"FC2-19\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/FC2-191.jpg?resize=400%2C498\" alt=\"FC2-19\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/FC2-191.jpg?resize=400%2C498 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/FC2-191-240x300.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>We note that only at the maximum frame rate does the Radeon almost equal the GTX 480&#8217;s stock performance.\u00a0 Finally we test at 1680&#215;1050 resolution:<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/FC2-161.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17041\" title=\"FC2-16\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/FC2-161.jpg?resize=400%2C498\" alt=\"FC2-16\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/FC2-161.jpg?resize=400%2C498 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/FC2-161-241x300.jpg 241w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here we see a clean sweep by GTX 480 in <em>Far Cry 2 &#8211; <\/em>and when it is overclocked, the performance difference is magnified. <!--pagetitle: Far Cry 2--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<h2><strong><em>World in Conflict<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/wic-jpg.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px\" title=\"wic\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/wic_thumb-jpg.jpg?resize=244%2C154\" border=\"0\" alt=\"wic\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><em>World In Conflict<\/em> is set in an alternate history Earth where the Cold War did not end and Russia invaded the USA in 1989 and the remaining Americans decided to strike back. <em>World in Conflict (WiC)<\/em> is a real-time tactical\/strategy video game developed by Massive Entertainment. Although it is generally considered a real-time strategy (RTS) game, <em>World in Conflict <\/em>includes gameplay typical of real-time tactical (RTT) games. <em>WiC<\/em> is filled with real vehicles from both the Russian and the American military. There are also tactical aids, including calling in massive bombing raids, access to chemical warfare, nuclear weapons, and far more.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Here is yet another amazing and very customizable and detailed DX10 benchmark that is available in-game or as a stand-alone. The particle effects and explosions in <em>World in Conflict<\/em> are truly spectacular! Every setting is fully maxed out.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">We start our benching at 2560&#215;1600:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/WiC-251.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17043\" title=\"WiC-25\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/WiC-251.jpg?resize=400%2C502\" alt=\"WiC-25\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/WiC-251.jpg?resize=400%2C502 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/WiC-251-239x300.jpg 239w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Again the GTX 480 adds to its lead when it is overclocked.\u00a0 World in Conflict is very playable at 2560&#215;1600 on our GTX 480 even to very acceptable minimums under the game&#8217;s most demanding situations.\u00a0 Next we see the results at 1920\u00d71200 resolution:<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/wic-19.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17046\" title=\"WiC-19\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/wic-19.jpg?resize=400%2C498\" alt=\"WiC-19\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/wic-19.jpg?resize=400%2C498 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/wic-19-240x300.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The GTX 480 adds to its lead over HD 5870 when both are overclocked.\u00a0 Now at 1680&#215;1050 resolution:<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/wic-16.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17047\" title=\"WiC-16\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/wic-16.jpg?resize=400%2C499\" alt=\"WiC-16\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/wic-16.jpg?resize=400%2C499 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/wic-16-240x300.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The GTX 480 delivers excellent performance all the way up to and including 2560&#215;1600.\u00a0 You probably want GTX 480 if you play a lot of <em>World-in-Conflict<\/em> at higher resolutions with your details and filtering fully maxed out.  <!--pagetitle: World in Conflict--><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<h2><strong><em>X3: Terran Conflict<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/x3tc-jpg.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px\" title=\"X3TC\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/x3tc_thumb-jpg.jpg?resize=244%2C154\" border=\"0\" alt=\"X3TC\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><em>X3:Terran Conflict<\/em><em> (X3:TC) <\/em>is another beautiful stand-alone benchmark that runs multiple tests and will really strain a lot of video cards. <em>X3:TC <\/em>is a space trading and combat simulator from Egosoft and is the most recent of their X-series of computer games. <em>X3:TC<\/em> is a standalone expansion of <em>X3: Reunion<\/em>, based in the same universe and on the same engine. It complements the story of previous games in the X-Universe and especially continues the events after the end of <em>X3: Reunion<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Compared to<em> Reunion, Terran Conflict<\/em> features a larger universe, more ships, and of course, new missions. The X-Universe is huge. The Terran faction was added with their own set of technology including powerful ships and stations. Many new weapons systems were developed for the expansion and it has generally received good reviews. It has a rather steep learning curve.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/x3tc-25.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17048\" title=\"X3TC-25\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/x3tc-25.jpg?resize=400%2C498\" alt=\"X3TC-25\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/x3tc-25.jpg?resize=400%2C498 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/x3tc-25-240x300.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Nothing seems to help the minimums at 2560&#215;1600.\u00a0\u00a0 We see minimal performance improvement from both video cards when they are overclocked and their relative ranking remains unchanged.\u00a0 Next we note the results at 1920\u00d71200:<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/x3tc-19.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17049\" title=\"X3TC-19\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/x3tc-19.jpg?resize=400%2C499\" alt=\"X3TC-19\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/x3tc-19.jpg?resize=400%2C499 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/x3tc-19-240x300.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">We see much the same results where the overclocked HD 5870 has the highest minimum but is edged out by the overclocked GTX 480 in average and maximum frame rates.\u00a0 Now at 1680&#215;1050:<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/x3tc-16.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17050\" title=\"X3TC-16\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/x3tc-16.jpg?resize=400%2C501\" alt=\"X3TC-16\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/x3tc-16.jpg?resize=400%2C501 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/x3tc-16-239x300.jpg 239w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Again we see a fairly tight grouping. However, all of our video cards perform well and all of them experience similar minimum framerates.\u00a0 Overall, the GTX 480 is slightly faster than the overclocked HD 5870 although you will not really notice any difference actually playing this game.<\/p>\n<p><!--pagetitle: X3 - Terran Conflict--><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em><strong>DiRT 2 Demo &#8211; (DX9c)<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/dirt21.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-17225\" title=\"dirt2\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/dirt21.jpg?resize=150%2C150\" alt=\"dirt2\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">Colin McRae: <em>DiRT 2<\/em> is a racing game that was released in September 2009, and is the sequel to Colin McRae:<em> Dirt<\/em>. It includes many new race-events, including stadium events as your RV travels from one event to another in many real-world environments across four continents. <em>Dirt 2<\/em> includes five different event types even allowing you to compete at new locations. It also includes a new multiplayer mode. <em>Dirt 2<\/em> is powered by an updated version of the EGO engine which was featured in <em>Race Driver: Grid<\/em>. This updated EGO engine also features an updated physics engine.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">We have been using the <em>Dirt 2<\/em> demo to benchmark up until now as it works just as well as in the retail game &#8211; until you try to run DX11 on a NVIDIA DX11 card, in which case it reverts back to DX9c. Evidently the developer did not provide support for NVIDIA&#8217;s new DX11 card in the demo although the retail game has no such issues. Since we ran all of our tests with the Dirt 2 demo in Part One, it was too late to switch to the full game for this Part 2. We instead edited the configuration file so that the HD 5870 also ran on the DX9 pathway so that we could have a solid apples-to-apples comparison of performance across all of the cards. Later on, in further testing, will use the full retail game for the DX11 pathway as the visuals are better.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">First we test our two video cards at 2560&#215;1600:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/dirt2-25.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17051\" title=\"Dirt2-25\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/dirt2-25.jpg?resize=400%2C499\" alt=\"Dirt2-25\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/dirt2-25.jpg?resize=400%2C499 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/dirt2-25-240x300.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">The GTX 480 pulls ahead of the HD 5870 in a not so tight race when they are stock clocked and the GTX improves its lead when it is overclocked. What about 1920&#215;1200?<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/dirt2-19.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17052\" title=\"Dirt2-19\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/dirt2-19.jpg?resize=400%2C498\" alt=\"Dirt2-19\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/dirt2-19.jpg?resize=400%2C498 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/dirt2-19-240x300.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Again the GTX 480 leads stock clocked and pulls further ahead of the HD 5870 when they are both overclocked.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/dirt2-16.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17053\" title=\"Dirt2-16\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/dirt2-16.jpg?resize=400%2C495\" alt=\"Dirt2-16\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/dirt2-16.jpg?resize=400%2C495 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/dirt2-16-242x300.jpg 242w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em>Dirt 2<\/em> gets the checkered flag on the GTX 480 on the DX9c pathway, especially as it is pushed to its red line.\u00a0 We look forward to bringing you DX11 results in subsequent testing.<\/p>\n<p><!--pagetitle: Dirt 2--><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em><strong>Left 4 Dead<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/left4dead.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-17205 alignleft\" title=\"left4dead\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/left4dead.jpg?resize=150%2C150\" alt=\"left4dead\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em> <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em> <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em> <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em> <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em>Left 4 Dead<\/em> <em>(L4D) <\/em>is a 2008 co-op first-person shooter that was developed by Turtle Rock Studios and purchased by Valve Corporation during its development. <em>Left 4 Dead<\/em> uses Valve&#8217;s proprietary Source engine and it replaces our older Souce benchmark which used<em> Half Life 2&#8217;s Lost Cost demo<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em>Left 4 Dead<\/em> is set in the aftermath of a worldwide pandemic which pits its four protagonists against hordes of the infected zombies. There are four game modes: a single-player mode in which your allies are controlled by AI; a four-player, co-op campaign mode; an eight-player online versus mode; and a four-player survival mode. In all modes, an artificial intelligence (AI), dubbed the &#8220;Director&#8221;, controls pacing and spawns, to create a more dynamic experience with increased replay value. It is best as a multiplayer game with humans.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">There is no built in benchmark, so we used ABT Senior Editor BFG10K&#8217;s custom time demo which is very repeatable. The game is updated regularly by Steam and we chose the highest detail settings and 4xAA.\u00a0 First we test at 2560&#215;1600 resolution.\u00a0 Please note that these charts do not begin at zero; we are emphasizing differences in a tight grouping:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/l4d-25.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17054\" title=\"L4D-25\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/l4d-25.jpg?resize=400%2C318\" alt=\"L4D-25\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/l4d-25.jpg?resize=400%2C318 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/l4d-25-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The situation reverses from stock clocks and now the overclocked GTX 480 now pulls ahead of the overclocked HD 5870.\u00a0 On to our next chart at 1920\u00d71200:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/l4d-19.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17055\" title=\"L4D-19\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/l4d-19.jpg?resize=400%2C318\" alt=\"L4D-19\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/l4d-19.jpg?resize=400%2C318 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/l4d-19-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>We note the same thing.\u00a0 Let&#8217;s move on to 1680&#215;1050 resolution:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/l4d-16.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17056\" title=\"L4D-16\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/l4d-16.jpg?resize=400%2C318\" alt=\"L4D-16\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/l4d-16.jpg?resize=400%2C318 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/l4d-16-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">At 2500&#215;1600, the stock-clocked GTX 480 stumbles in comparison to the HD 5870 but moves ahead when it is overclocked.\u00a0 The overclocked GTX 480 takes the lead in <em>Left 4 Dead<\/em>.\u00a0 However, we note that for playing Source engine games, a HD 4870 or GTX 260+ is usually plenty and we will now be looking to set MSAA at least to 8x for both of our DX 11 cards which we shall explore in Part Three.<\/p>\n<p><!--pagetitle: Left 4 Dead--><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<h2><strong><em>Lost Planet<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n<h2><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/lostplanet-jpg.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px\" title=\"LostPlanet\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/lostplanet_thumb-jpg.jpg?resize=244%2C154\" border=\"0\" alt=\"LostPlanet\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/h2>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>Lost Planet: Extreme Condition<\/em> 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\u2019t really much of a difference between the two versions except perhaps shadows. Unfortunately, the DX10 version doesn\u2019t look that much better when you\u2019re actually playing the game and it still runs slower than the DX9 version.<\/p>\n<p>We use the in-game performance test from the retail copy of <em>Lost Planet<\/em> and updated through Steam to the latest version for our runs. This run isn\u2019t completely scripted as the creatures act a little differently each time you run it, requiring multiple runs. <em>Lost Planet\u2019s<\/em> Snow and Cave demos are run continuously by the performance test and blend into each other.<\/p>\n<p>Here are our benchmark results with the more demanding benchmark, Snow. All settings are fully maxed out in-game including 4xAA\/16xAF.  Let&#8217;s start with 2560X1600.\u00a0 In our last Part One, there is a typo in the chart where the stock GTX 480&#8217;s maximum frame rate is wrongly presented as 85 FPS; this one corrects that error; it is 57 FPS.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Now at 1920\u00d71200 resolution:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/LP-251.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17096\" title=\"LP-25\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/LP-251.jpg?resize=400%2C501\" alt=\"LP-25\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/LP-251.jpg?resize=400%2C501 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/LP-251-239x300.jpg 239w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Now at 1920&#215;1200:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/lp-19.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17059\" title=\"LP-19\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/lp-19.jpg?resize=400%2C501\" alt=\"LP-19\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/lp-19.jpg?resize=400%2C501 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/lp-19-239x300.jpg 239w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Finally at 1680&#215;1050:<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/lp-16.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17060\" title=\"LP-16\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/lp-16.jpg?resize=400%2C501\" alt=\"LP-16\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/lp-16.jpg?resize=400%2C501 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/lp-16-239x300.jpg 239w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">All of our top cards are tightly grouped. For the averages, the GTX 480 edges the HD5870. Performance is close but the GTX 480 at 825\/1100 MHz wins the duel in <em>Lost Planet<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><!--pagetitle: Lost Planet--><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<h3>Unreal Tournament 3 (UT3)<\/h3>\n<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/ut3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-17206\" title=\"UT3\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/ut3.jpg?resize=150%2C150\" alt=\"UT3\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a> <\/em> <em> <\/em> <em> <\/em> <em> <\/em> <em> <\/em> <em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Unreal Tournament 3 (UT3)<\/em> is the fourth game in the Unreal Tournament series. <em>UT3<\/em> is a first-person shooter and online multiplayer video game by Epic Games. <em>Unreal Tournament 3<\/em> provides a good balance between image quality and performance, rendering complex scenes well even on lower-end PCs. Of course, on high-end graphics cards you can really turn up the detail. <em>UT3<\/em> is primarily an online multiplayer title offering several game modes and it also includes an offline single-player game with a campaign.<\/p>\n<p>For our tests, we used the very latest 1.5 game patch for <em>Unreal Tournament 3<\/em>, released after its \u2018Titan\u2019 pack. The game doesn\u2019t have a built-in benchmarking tool, so we used FRAPS and did a fly-by of a chosen level. Here we note that performance numbers reported are a bit higher than compared to in-game. The map we use is called \u201cContainment\u201d and it is one of the most demanding of the fly-bys. Our tests were run at resolutions of 1920 x 1200 and 1680 x 1050 with UT3\u2019s in-game graphics options set to their maximum values.<\/p>\n<p>One drawback of the way the <em>UT3<\/em> engine is designed is that there is no support for anti-aliasing built in so we forced 4xAA in each vendor\u2019s control panel. We record a demo in the game and a set number of frames are saved in a file for playback. When playing back the demo, the game engine then renders the frames as quickly as possible, which is why you will often see it playing it back more quickly than you would actually play the game.  Here is Containment Demo, first at 2560&#215;1600:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/ut3-25.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17061\" title=\"UT3-25\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/ut3-25.jpg?resize=400%2C501\" alt=\"UT3-25\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/ut3-25.jpg?resize=400%2C501 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/ut3-25-239x300.jpg 239w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\">Now at 1920\u00d71200:<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/ut3-19.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17062\" title=\"UT3-19\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/ut3-19.jpg?resize=400%2C497\" alt=\"UT3-19\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/ut3-19.jpg?resize=400%2C497 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/ut3-19-241x300.jpg 241w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Finally at 1680&#215;1050:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/ut3-16.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17063\" title=\"UT3-16\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/ut3-16.jpg?resize=400%2C499\" alt=\"UT3-16\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/ut3-16.jpg?resize=400%2C499 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/ut3-16-240x300.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">There is absolutely no problem playing this game fully maxed out with any of our older graphics cards such as HD 4870 or GTX 280, never mind GTX 480 and HD 5870 providing overkill framerates.\u00a0 However, the GTX 480 wins in the <em>Unreal Tournament 3 <\/em>arena.<\/p>\n<p><!--pagetitle: UnrealTournament3--><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<h3><em>Resident Evil 5<\/em><\/h3>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/re5dx10.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-17207\" title=\"RE5DX10\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/re5dx10.jpg?resize=150%2C150\" alt=\"RE5DX10\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em> <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em> <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em> <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em> <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em>Resident Evil 5 <\/em>is a survival horror third-person shooter developed and published by Capcom that has become the best selling single title in the series. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil series and it was released for Windows in September 2009. Res<em>ident Evil 5<\/em> revolves around two investigators pulled into a bio-terrorist threat in a fictional town in Africa.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em>Resident Evil 5<\/em> features online co-op play over the internet and also takes advantage of NVIDIA\u2019s new GeForce 3D Vision technology. The PC version comes with exclusive content the consoles do not have. The developer&#8217;s emphasis is in optimizing high frame rates but they have implemented HDR, tone mapping, depth of field and motion blur into the game. <em>Re5<\/em>&#8216;s custom game engine, \u2018MT Framework&#8217;, already supports DX10 to benefit from less memory usage and faster loading. <em>Resident Evil 5<\/em> gives you choice as to DX10 or Dx 9 and we naturally ran the DX10 pathway.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">There are two benchmarks built-into <em>Resident Evil 5. <\/em>We chose the fixed benchmark. Here it is at 2560&#215;1600:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/re5-25.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17064\" title=\"RE5-25\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/re5-25.jpg?resize=400%2C318\" alt=\"RE5-25\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/re5-25.jpg?resize=400%2C318 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/re5-25-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The overclocked HD 5870 catches up to the stock GTX 480, but overclocking the NVIDIA video card further widens the performance gap at this high resolution.\u00a0 However, neither card has any issues playing this game fully maxed out.\u00a0 Here are the results at 1920\u00d71200 resolution:<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/re5-19.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17065\" title=\"RE5-19\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/re5-19.jpg?resize=400%2C318\" alt=\"RE5-19\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/re5-19.jpg?resize=400%2C318 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/re5-19-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Let&#8217;s check out 1680&#215;1050:<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/re5-16.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17066\" title=\"RE5-16\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/re5-16.jpg?resize=400%2C317\" alt=\"RE5-16\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/re5-16.jpg?resize=400%2C317 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/re5-16-300x237.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">The overclocked GTX 480 is able to distinguish itself from the pack although the stock cards also turn in good performance in <em>Resident Evil 5<\/em>..<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><!--pagetitle: Resident Evil 5--><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><strong><em>S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Call of Pripyat<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/stalker_cs-jpg.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px\" title=\"STALKER_CS\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/stalker_cs_thumb-jpg.jpg?resize=244%2C154\" border=\"0\" alt=\"STALKER_CS\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em>S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Call of Pripyat<\/em> became a brand new DX11 benchmark for us after GSC Game World released a another story expansion to the original <em>Shadows of Chernobyl<\/em>. <em> <\/em>It is the third game in the <em>S.T.A.L.K.E.R.<\/em> series. All of these games have non-linear storylines which feature role-playing game elements. In<em> <\/em>both games, the player assumes the identity of a S.T.A.L.K.E.R.; an illegal artifact scavenger in \u201cThe Zone\u201d which encompasses about 30 square kilometers. It is the location of an alternate reality story surrounding the Chernobyl Power Plant after another (fictitious) explosion. <em> <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em>S.T.A.L.K.E.R.<\/em>, <em>Call of Pripyat<\/em> features \u201ca living breathing world\u201d with highly developed NPC creature AI.<em> Call of Pripyat utilizes <\/em>the XRAY 1.6 Engine, allowing advanced modern graphical features through the use of DirectX 11 to be fully intregrated.<em> Call of Pripyat <\/em>is also compatible with <em>DirectX 8, 9, 10 and 10.1. <\/em>It<em> <\/em>uses the X-ray 1.6 Engine<strong> <\/strong>one outstanding feature being the inclusion of real-time GPU tessellation\u2013 a Shader model 3.0 &amp; 4.0 graphics engine featuring HDR, parallax and normal mapping, soft shadows, motion blur, weather effects and day-to-night cycles.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">As with other engines using deferred shading, the original DX9c X-ray Engine does not support anti-aliasing with dynamic lighting enabled, although the DX10 and DX 11 versions do. We are using the stand-alone \u201cofficial\u201d benchmark by <em>Clear Sky\u2019s <\/em>creators. <em>Call of Pripyat<\/em> is top-notch and worthy to be part of the <em>S.T.A.L.K.E.R\u2019<\/em>s universe with even more awesome DX11 effects which help to create and enhance their game\u2019s already incredible atmosphere. As with Clear Sky before it, DX10 and now DX11 comes with steep hardware requirements and this new game still really needs multi-GPU to run at its maximum settings.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">We picked the most stressful test out of the four, \u201cSun shafts\u201d. It brings the heaviest penalty due to its extreme use of shaders to create DX10\/DX10.1 and DX11 effects. We ran this benchmark fully maxed out in DX11.0 with \u201cultra\u201d settings plus 4xAA, including applying edge-detect MSAA which chokes performance even further.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">We present our maximum DX11 settings for <em>S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Call of Pripyat<\/em> DX11 benchmark at 2560&#215;1600:<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/cop_settingsdx11.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-16379\" title=\"COP_SettingsDX11\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/cop_settingsdx11.jpg?resize=432%2C365\" alt=\"COP_SettingsDX11\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/cop_settingsdx11.jpg?resize=432%2C365 800w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/cop_settingsdx11-300x253.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 432px) 100vw, 432px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a>Now on to the benchmarks at 2560&#215;1600:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/cop-25.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17067\" title=\"CoP-25\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/cop-25.jpg?resize=400%2C498\" alt=\"CoP-25\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/cop-25.jpg?resize=400%2C498 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/cop-25-240x300.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Next at 1920\u00d71200:<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/cop-19.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17068\" title=\"CoP-19\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/cop-19.jpg?resize=400%2C499\" alt=\"CoP-19\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/cop-19.jpg?resize=400%2C499 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/cop-19-240x300.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\">Let&#8217;s check out 1680&#215;1050:<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/cop-16.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17070\" title=\"CoP-16\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/cop-16.jpg?resize=400%2C498\" alt=\"CoP-16\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/cop-16.jpg?resize=400%2C498 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/cop-16-240x300.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">The overclocked HD 5870 gains some nice ground on the stock GTX 480 but the performance gap widens when the GTX is overclocked and it makes a clean sweep of these benches.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><!--pagetitle: Call of Pripyat--><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">ARMA 2<\/h3>\n<div>\n<h2><strong><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/arma2demo-jpg.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px\" title=\"ArmA2Demo\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/arma2demo_thumb-jpg.jpg?resize=244%2C154\" border=\"0\" alt=\"ArmA2Demo\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em>ARMA 2<\/em> is taken from the third installment in their series of realistic modern military simulation games from Bohemia Interactive. It features a player-driven story with more than 70 weapons and over 100 different vehicles. With a game world of 225 square km that is taken from actual surveillance photos, you can expect truly massive online battles with five distinct armed groups to choose from.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em>ARMA2<\/em> can be considered a tactical shooter where the player commands a squad of AI \u2013 or many squads &#8211; with elements of real-time tactics.<em>ARMA 2<\/em> Demo was released in late June, 2009 and coming in at 2.6 GB, the <em>ARMA 2<\/em> demo allows you to experience the same game play that is featured in the full version of ARMA 2 \u2013 including multiplayer, as well as a few of the vehicles, weapons and units. The <em>ARMA2<\/em> demo also contains a part of Chernarus terrain, a small section of the full game world set in the fictional \u201cBlack Russia\u201d.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">In previous testing, there was always a massive performance hit on any DX10\/10.1 card when maximum details are enabled at the resolutions that we test; AA is set to &#8220;high&#8221;.\u00a0 Let&#8217;s see how our overclocked video cards do with AR<em>MA 2 <\/em>at 2560&#215;1600.\u00a0 Again, the charts do not start with zero as the grouping is very tight.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/arma2-25.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17071\" title=\"ARMA2-25\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/arma2-25.jpg?resize=400%2C318\" alt=\"ARMA2-25\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/arma2-25.jpg?resize=400%2C318 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/arma2-25-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">Notice there is not much difference overclocked; the cards are within 1-2 FPS from their stock to maximum overclock:<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/arma2-19.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17072\" title=\"ARMA2-19\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/arma2-19.jpg?resize=400%2C318\" alt=\"ARMA2-19\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/arma2-19.jpg?resize=400%2C318 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/arma2-19-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a>We see the same thing; a small performance increase when each card is overclocked and the GTX 480 is 2 frames per second faster than the HD 5870.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/arma2-16.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17073\" title=\"ARMA2-16\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/arma2-16.jpg?resize=400%2C318\" alt=\"ARMA2-16\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/arma2-16.jpg?resize=400%2C318 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/arma2-16-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a>Again, the GTX 480 just edges out the HD 5870, overclocked and stock beating it by 1 frame per second in <em>ARMA\u00a0 2<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><!--pagetitle: ARMA2--><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em>Tom Clancy&#8217;s H.A.W.X.<\/em><\/h3>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/hawx_dx10.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-17208\" title=\"HAWX_dx10\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/hawx_dx10.jpg?resize=150%2C150\" alt=\"HAWX_dx10\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">Tom Clancy&#8217;s<em> H.A.W.X.<\/em> is an air combat video game developed by Ubisoft Romania and published by Ubisoft for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It was released in United States on March 6, 2009. You have the opportunity to fly 54 aircraft over real world locations and cities in somewhat realistic environments that are created with satellite data. This game is a more of a take on flying than a real simulation and it has received mixed reviews.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">The game story takes place during the time of Tom Clancy&#8217;s <em>Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. H.A.W.X.<\/em> is set in the year 2014 where private military companies have replaced government-run military in many countries. The player is placed into the cockpit as an elite ex-military pilot who is recruited by one of these corporations to work for them as a mercenary. You later return to the US Air Force with a team as you try to prevent a full scale terrorist attack on the United States which was started by your former employer.<em> <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em> <\/em> Let&#8217;s check out <em>H.A.W.X.<\/em> at 2560&#215;1600:<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/HAWX-251.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17075\" title=\"HAWX-25\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/HAWX-251.jpg?resize=400%2C316\" alt=\"HAWX-25\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/HAWX-251.jpg?resize=400%2C316 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/HAWX-251-300x237.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">Although the overclocked HD 5870 nearly catches the stock GTX 480, the overclocked GTX 480 flys away from the overclocked HD 5870 and solidly picks up framerates when it is overclocked from its own stock clocks. Here are our results at 1920\u00d71200 resolution:<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/hawx-19.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17076\" title=\"HAWX-19\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/hawx-19.jpg?resize=400%2C318\" alt=\"HAWX-19\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/hawx-19.jpg?resize=400%2C318 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/hawx-19-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">Again, the GTX 480 speeds by HD 5870 which in turn gained nicely with its own overclock to beat the stock GTX 480&#8217;s performance.\u00a0 Let&#8217;s see what testing at 1680&#215;1050 shows.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/hawx-16.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17077\" title=\"HAWX-16\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/hawx-16.jpg?resize=400%2C316\" alt=\"HAWX-16\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/hawx-16.jpg?resize=400%2C316 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/hawx-16-300x237.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em>H.A.W.X.<\/em> is clearly fastest on the overclocked GTX 480. Let&#8217;s move on to a DX11 online game, <em>BattleForge.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em><!--pagetitle: H.A.W.X.--><!--nextpage--><\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><strong><em>BattleForge<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/battleforge.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-17209\" title=\"battleforge\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/battleforge.jpg?resize=150%2C150\" alt=\"battleforge\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><em>BattleForge<\/em> is an online PC game developed by EA Phenomic and published by Electronic Arts. The full game and a demo was released in March 2009. <em>BattleForge<\/em> is a card based RTS that revolves around acquiring and winning by means of micro-transactions for buying new cards. By May, 2009, BattleForge became a Play 4 Free game with fewer cards than the retail version. <em>BattleForge<\/em> supports Directx 11 with full support for hardware tessellation. It is very impressive visually and quite demanding on any system.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">First we test with our three top cards at 2560&#215;1600 using the <em>BattleForge<\/em> built-in benchmark with all of its settings completely maxed out and with 4xAA:<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/bf-25.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17078\" title=\"BF-25\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/bf-25.jpg?resize=400%2C318\" alt=\"BF-25\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/bf-25.jpg?resize=400%2C318 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/bf-25-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">The stock GTX 480 is ahead of the overclocked HD 5870; overclocking the GTX 480 gives it a further solid performance boost.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/bf-19.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17079\" title=\"BF-19\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/bf-19.jpg?resize=400%2C318\" alt=\"BF-19\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/bf-19.jpg?resize=400%2C318 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/bf-19-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">Again, the overclocked GTX 480 clearly leads followed by it at stock clocks. Now at 1680&#215;1050 resolution:<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/bf-16.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17080\" title=\"BF-16\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/bf-16.jpg?resize=400%2C317\" alt=\"BF-16\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/bf-16.jpg?resize=400%2C317 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/bf-16-300x237.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<ul style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">The overclocked GTX 480 is fastest in <em>BattleForge<\/em> followed by the stock clocked GTX 480 even though in all cases, overclocking our HD 5870 gave it some more framerates.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><!--pagetitle: BattleForge--><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">Heaven benchmark, Unigine Engine<\/h3>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/unigine-1-0.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-17210\" title=\"unigine-1.0\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/unigine-1-0.jpg?resize=150%2C150\" alt=\"unigine-1.0\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">Now we test the synthetic Heaven 1.0 benchmark based on the Unigine engine. It uses DX11 and fairly heavy tessellation which will strain any graphics card. Here are the settings we used for this benchmark (we checked &#8216;full-screen&#8217;).<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/heaven_1-0_settings.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-16405 aligncenter\" title=\"Heaven_1.0_settings\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/heaven_1-0_settings.jpg?resize=440%2C310\" alt=\"Heaven_1.0_settings\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/heaven_1-0_settings.jpg?resize=440%2C310 550w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/heaven_1-0_settings-300x211.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 440px) 100vw, 440px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here is our benchmark run at 2560&#215;1600. In Part One we mistakenly posted our DX10 results as DX11 where HD 5870 and GTX 480 were 0.1 FPS apart.\u00a0 This chart is correct:<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Heaven1.0-251.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17082\" title=\"Heaven1.0-25\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Heaven1.0-251.jpg?resize=400%2C315\" alt=\"Heaven1.0-25\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Heaven1.0-251.jpg?resize=400%2C315 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Heaven1.0-251-300x236.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">Now at 1920&#215;1200:<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/heaven1-0-19.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17083\" title=\"Heaven1.0-19\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/heaven1-0-19.jpg?resize=400%2C317\" alt=\"Heaven1.0-19\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/heaven1-0-19.jpg?resize=400%2C317 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/heaven1-0-19-300x237.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>And finally at 1680&#215;1050:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/heaven1-0-16.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17084\" title=\"Heaven1.0-16\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/heaven1-0-16.jpg?resize=400%2C317\" alt=\"Heaven1.0-16\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/heaven1-0-16.jpg?resize=400%2C317 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/heaven1-0-16-300x237.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a>It won&#8217;t be until later this year that we will see our first DX11 games based on the Unigine Engine.\u00a0 For what it is worth, GTX 480 excels in this benchmark.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Let&#8217;s just include Heaven 2.0 with Heaven 1.0 as they are both Unigine engine; version 2.0 is just using much more extreme tessellation with nicer visuals as a result.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: left;\">Heaven 2.0<\/h3>\n<p>There will be at least two DX11 games based on Unigine that will be released later on this year. And there is a brand new and even more stressful Unigine 2.0 benchmark that was just released this week which we will explore next week in part two of this review.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/heaven_2-0_settings.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-16406 aligncenter\" title=\"Heaven_2.0_settings\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/heaven_2-0_settings.jpg?resize=440%2C309\" alt=\"Heaven_2.0_settings\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/heaven_2-0_settings.jpg?resize=440%2C309 550w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/heaven_2-0_settings-300x210.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 440px) 100vw, 440px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As you can see there is a setting for &#8220;extreme tessellation&#8221;. We will tell you right now that this test chokes the GTX 480 at the highest settings but it is better than the slide show the Radeon HD 5870 manages. However, the visuals are also extraordinary.\u00a0 Here are the results at 2560&#215;1600:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/heaven2-0-25.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17085\" title=\"Heaven2.0-25\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/heaven2-0-25.jpg?resize=400%2C314\" alt=\"Heaven2.0-25\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/heaven2-0-25.jpg?resize=400%2C314 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/heaven2-0-25-300x235.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a>And now at 1920&#215;1200:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/heaven2-0-19.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17086\" title=\"Heaven2.0-19\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/heaven2-0-19.jpg?resize=400%2C318\" alt=\"Heaven2.0-19\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/heaven2-0-19.jpg?resize=400%2C318 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/heaven2-0-19-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a>Finally at 1680&#215;1050:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/heaven2-0-16.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17087\" title=\"Heaven2.0-16\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/heaven2-0-16.jpg?resize=400%2C316\" alt=\"Heaven2.0-16\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/heaven2-0-16.jpg?resize=400%2C316 500w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/heaven2-0-16-300x237.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a>Of course, this is a synthetic test based on a game engine that has yet to see a PC game that uses it in retail.\u00a0 But it is worth noting the tessellation capabilities of the GTX 480 and its scaling with clock speed.<\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\"><!--pagetitle: Heaven 1.0 &#038; 2.0--><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<h3>Performance Summary Chart<\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/summary1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17091\" title=\"Summary1\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/summary1.jpg?resize=400%2C750\" alt=\"Summary1\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/summary1.jpg?resize=400%2C750 400w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/summary1-160x300.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/summary2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17092\" title=\"Summary2\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/summary2.jpg?resize=400%2C749\" alt=\"Summary2\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/summary2.jpg?resize=400%2C749 400w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/summary2-160x300.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/summary3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17093\" title=\"Summary3\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/summary3.jpg?resize=400%2C629\" alt=\"Summary3\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/summary3.jpg?resize=400%2C629 400w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/summary3-190x300.jpg 190w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<p><!--pagetitle: Performance Summary--><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<h3>Power Usage &#8211; NVIDIA&#8217;s TDP<\/h3>\n<p>This is important for many people as a very hot running GPU is not only not &#8220;green&#8221;, it throws warm air into your room that your air conditioner must work extra hard to compensate for. Of course, for those of us like this editor who lives where it is cooler than warmer, a small space-heater in ones PC is a plus. We have seen the GTX 480&#8217;s TDP specification, that it is 250W &#8211; far more than the HD 5870&#8217;s 188W TDP &#8211; and the GTX 480 requires 6-pin+8-pin PCIe connectors as shown below.  <a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/480_pcie.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-16449\" title=\"480_PCIe\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/480_pcie.jpg?resize=300%2C255\" alt=\"480_PCIe\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/480_pcie.jpg?resize=300%2C255 300w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/480_pcie.jpg 550w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a> As we contrast the GTX 480 with the HD 5870, only 6-pin+6-pin PCIe connectors are required for the Radeon. You will also note that the HD 5870 is physically longer than the GeForce and some cutting modification had to be made to the Cooler Master Gladiator 600 to accommodate it.  <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-16448\" title=\"5970_PCIe_noroom\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/5970_pcie_noroom.jpg?resize=300%2C159\" alt=\"5970_PCIe_noroom\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/5970_pcie_noroom.jpg?resize=300%2C159 300w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/5970_pcie_noroom.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/> The GTX 480&#8217;s performance does come at a power cost; compare the system total power draw at the wall with the with the HD 5870 first &#8211; at idle and then at maximum GPU usage when running FurMark.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/powerhdmax.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-16453 alignright\" title=\"PowerHDMax\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/powerhdmax.jpg?resize=173%2C160\" alt=\"PowerHDMax\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/powerhdmax.jpg?resize=173%2C160 300w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/powerhdmax.jpg 550w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 173px) 100vw, 173px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/PowerHDIdle21.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-16452 alignleft\" title=\"PowerHDIdle2\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/PowerHDIdle21.jpg?resize=173%2C156\" alt=\"PowerHDIdle2\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/PowerHDIdle21.jpg?resize=173%2C156 300w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/PowerHDIdle21.jpg 552w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 173px) 100vw, 173px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Now the total system power draw from the wall with the same PC, but with the GTX 480 inside instead of the HD 5870. First, we see the idle state and then with the GTX GPU maxed out running FurMark.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-16455 alignright\" title=\"PowerGTXMax\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/powergtxmax.jpg?resize=173%2C151\" alt=\"PowerGTXMax\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/powergtxmax.jpg?resize=173%2C151 300w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/powergtxmax.jpg 550w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 173px) 100vw, 173px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/powerhdidle.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-16454 alignleft\" title=\"PowerHDIdle\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/powerhdidle.jpg?resize=173%2C157\" alt=\"PowerHDIdle\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/powerhdidle.jpg?resize=173%2C157 300w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/powerhdidle.jpg 550w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 173px) 100vw, 173px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Of course, the second image is of our overclocked GTX 480. We see that we would be pulling over 250W from the wall! This also brings up overclocking which we shall cover shortly.<\/p>\n<p>FurMark will stress a GPU&#8217;s stability and give the maximum thermals that one would never see in-game. You can consider FurMark&#8217;s torture tests, &#8220;worst case&#8221; scenarios for power and heat. Here is a screen shot of FurMark running at 2560&#215;1600:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/furmark.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-16456\" title=\"FurMark\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/furmark.jpg?resize=300%2C197\" alt=\"FurMark\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/furmark.jpg?resize=300%2C197 300w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/furmark.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here is GPU-Z right next to FurMark results:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/gpuz_furm.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-16457\" title=\"GPUZ_FurM\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/gpuz_furm.jpg?resize=480%2C239\" alt=\"GPUZ_FurM\" srcset=\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/gpuz_furm.jpg?resize=480%2C239 800w, http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/gpuz_furm-300x149.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It definitely runs toasty at 97C as &#8220;worst case&#8221; but the reference cooling solution appears up to the task.\u00a0 At no time while we were overclocking our GTX 480 to 825\/1100 MHz and running it in games did we see temperatures as high as what FurMark was able to achieve at stock clocks.\u00a0 Also, we might note that our case temperatures remained below 100F although ambient temperatures rose to 80F !\u00a0 We attribute this to six 120 MM to 140 MM case fans cooling our Gladiator 600 mid tower case.  <strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Why the apparent discrepancy between Published specs and the tests?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>250W TDP Maximum Board Power&#8221; is given in NVIDIA&#8217;s specifications but we see the GTX 480 actually draws more than that just from our own total system measurement and it has also been confirmed by other reviewers.<\/p>\n<p>We asked NVIDIA to explain and the reply was that <strong>TDP is a measure of maximum power draw <em>over time <\/em>in real world applications<\/strong>. It does not represent the <em>maximum<\/em> power draw in extreme cases such as FurMark nor do they measure the peak power draw in games except to average them.  Readers are advised to check this out:<\/p>\n<p><!-- m --><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thermal_design_power\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thermal_design_power', 'http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thermal_design_power']);\" >http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thermal_design_power<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>The thermal design power (TDP), sometimes called thermal design point, represents the maximum amount of power the cooling system in a computer is required to dissipate. . . . The TDP is typically not the most power the chip could ever draw, such as by a power virus, but rather the maximum power that it would draw when running real applications. . . . Since safety margins and the definition of what constitutes a real application vary between manufacturers, TDP values between different manufacturers cannot be accurately compared.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Evidently Nvidia doesn\u2019t release its peak board power specifications publicly. Clearly it is possible to go well over 250W with tests like FurMark. But now we know that NVIDIA&#8217;s <strong>&#8220;maximum board power = 250W&#8221;<\/strong> is measured &#8220;over time in real world gaming&#8221;.\u00a0 So it is an average measurement and it is tested with many games.<\/p>\n<p><!-- m --><!--pagetitle: Power consumption--> <!--pagetitle: Conclusion--><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: left\">Conclusion<\/h3>\n<p>This conclusion is a short one and it dictated itself.\u00a0 The HD 5870 overclocks solidly in many cases and once overclocked to about 975\/1300 MHz it will in many cases catch the stock GTX 480 when performance is already reasonably close.\u00a0 However, the GTX 480 when it is overclocked also turns into a performance monster and in many cases now runs away from even the overclocked HD 5870.\u00a0 This bodes very well for GF100 Fermi architecture and indicates that NVIDIA has very solid scalable new architecture to build on although it is still on an improving process.<\/p>\n<p>We look forward to seeing what NVIDIA its partners have in store with future variants of GTX 480 and the rest of the Fermi GeForce family.\u00a0 We also look forward to AMD&#8217;s response beyond overclocking its current HD 5870.  This has been quite an enjoyable two-week hand&#8217;s on experience for us in comparing GTX 480 versus HD 5870 and with each video card solidly overclocked.<\/p>\n<p>We feel privileged to bring you our very first overclocked benchmarks and performance testing of GTX 480 versus HD 5870. We like it so much so that we will make this a series until we have covered this subject in depth.\u00a0 Next up in this series is an exploration of the relative performance hit of 8xMSAA over 4xMSAA for the HD 5870 versus the GTX 480&#8217;s performance hit.\u00a0 We also expect to explore GTX 480 SLI versus HD 5870 CrossFire and NVIDIA&#8217;s claims of incredible scaling to 90% or so under Windows 7.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, feel free to comment below, ask questions or have a detailed discussion in our ABT forum. If you have any requests on what you would like us to focus on for Part Three or for any other information, please join our ABT forum.<\/p>\n<p>Mark Poppin<\/p>\n<p>ABT Senior Editor<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Please join us in our <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/abt\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\">Forums<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Become a Fan on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/AlienBabelTech\/123268467142\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/AlienBabelTech\/123268467142', 'Facebook']);\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Follow us on <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/alienbabeltech\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/twitter.com\/alienbabeltech', 'Twitter']);\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a><\/p>\n<p>For the latest updates from ABT, please <a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?feed=rss2\" target=\"_blank\">join our RSS News Feed<\/a> Join our Distributed Computing teams<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Folding@Home &#8211; Team AlienBabelTech &#8211; 164304<\/li>\n<li>SETI@Home &#8211; Team AlienBabelTech &#8211; 138705<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldcommunitygrid.org\/reg\/viewRegister.do?teamID=3P39R3SRV1\" onclick=\"_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outbound-article', 'http:\/\/www.worldcommunitygrid.org\/reg\/viewRegister.do?teamID=3P39R3SRV1', 'World Community Grid &#8211; Team AlienBabelTech']);\" target=\"_blank\">World Community Grid &#8211; Team AlienBabelTech<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><!--pagetitle: Conclusion--><strong> <\/strong> <strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=16997\"><img decoding=\"async\" align=top title=\"Author: Mark Poppin\" src=\"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Analysis-Part-2-Final.png\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":18076,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2533,7814,6,7],"tags":[72,73,2354,2362,3058,3312,3409,3311,3310,121,292,87],"class_list":["post-16997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abt-news","category-articles","category-news","category-technology","tag-amd","tag-ati","tag-fermi","tag-gf100","tag-gtx-480","tag-gtx-480-benchmarks","tag-gtx-480-overclocked","tag-gtx-480-review","tag-gtx-480-vs-hd-5870","tag-nvidia","tag-overclocking","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}